Touch Not the Cat

by Mary Stewart

  And Francis . . . The thought came suddenly, unbidden and unwelcome. He could not be mistaken for his brothers by anyone who knew them, but at a frontier, with a passport belonging to one of the twins . . .

  I slammed the door on that one. I would not even think it. I sat slumped in my chair, staring at the envelope, while my thoughts trailed off into weary confusion.

  ‘How long have you been sweet on him?’

  My eyes came up to Rob’s with a jerk, but somehow, I wasn’t startled. It seemed natural to be asked. The strange thing was that now I found myself hesitating. The old, direct country phrase didn’t fit what I was feeling; the half-guilt; the two-way pull of the affection I felt for my cousin, contrasted with the total abandonment to the possession of my secret friend. ‘I – It’s hard to say. Of the three of them, I suppose it was always James. But in the last few years . . . And now, since I got back home . . . In love with him? I just don’t know.’

  No one could have claimed this for a coherent answer, but he nodded, his rather sombre look lightening as he smiled. ‘Well, you’ve got yourself into a rare muddle and no mistake, luv: and I doubt it hardly helps to have the pair of them taking turns to sit on your doorstep and pressure you to do things you don’t want to do.’ The smile deepened at my look. ‘I told you I was just part of the landscape. You’d be surprised the things I know. It was obvious, anyway. It’ll take months to prove your Dad’s Will and get everything sorted out, but if you’d agree to break the trust now and let the land go, they could borrow on that promise straight away.’ A pause of silence, broken by the uneven ticking of the clock. ‘Bryony, how much do you really care about this place? Would you want to stay on here?’

  I said, rather wearily: ‘Everyone keeps asking me that, and I keep saying I don’t know yet. How do I know what I want to do with the rest of my life? And how do I know – I mean, are you talking about James?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t. We’ve gone through all that. Whether you’re sweet on him or not, you’ll have to find out what really happened, or you’ll never be able to get along with either of them, will you? No, I was talking about your cottage. What the Vicar calls Naboth’s Vineyard.’

  ‘Calls it what?’

  ‘Naboth’s Vineyard. I asked him what he meant, and he said something about the Polish Corridor. Talks very sideways, sometimes, Mr Bryanston.’

  ‘I know what he meant, I think,’ I said. ‘The cottage and the orchard are the only outlet from the Court to Penny’s Flats. The gardens wouldn’t be much use to a building contractor without access to the main road.’

  ‘Aye, that’s it.’ It was apparent that Rob, too, knew exactly what Mr Bryanston had meant. ‘So you see how much it matters to them to keep on the sweet side of you. And you see why it matters not to let them make a guess at where you really found that silver pen.’

  I must have been staring. I suppose I knew quite well what he was saying, but something in me could not accept it.

  ‘All right,’ he said, with a return to the old, uncompromising manner, ‘I’ll spell it out. You won’t like it, mind, but I’ve got to say it. I’ve had it on my mind ever since you told me what your Dad said. You’ve got to give a thought to its maybe not being an accident at all.’

  ‘But it must have been! You can’t honestly think that James – or even Emory—’

  ‘I’m thinking nothing. I’m telling you that you’ve got to be ready to believe anything of anybody. Your Dad talked of danger, didn’t he, and told you to be careful? There’s no magic about an Ashley that says they couldn’t kill a man, is there?’

  ‘No. My God, plenty of them have . . . But nowadays, one of my cousins kill my father for gain? No.’

  ‘Well, I agree with you. I’m only saying it could happen. We none of us know what a chap’s capable of, or even what we might be capable of ourselves. I’d have thought the last few years would have taught anyone that.’ He reached a hand across the table and touched mine, gently. ‘All I’m asking is that you do what your Dad said, and be careful. Keep it in mind that even your cousins might get nasty, even with you. There’s a lot here we don’t understand, and till we do . . .’

  He let it hang.

  In the silence that followed, without looking at him, I turned the envelope over and showed him the address.

  ‘I see.’ His voice held satisfaction, and something else I couldn’t put a name to. ‘You mean I’ve been wasting my breath? You’ve made your own decision all along?’

  ‘In a way. But you haven’t wasted your breath, Rob. I’m not quite sure if I ever would have mailed it, but I will now.’

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘A photograph. Do you remember the one of the twins and you that day you caught all those eels? When you tipped them out beside the lake?’

  ‘Aye, and the half of them went straight back in.’ He laughed. ‘And Emory called me a – Emory was pretty mad.’

  ‘There’s no need to be coy. I remember quite well what Emory called you. He had a right to be mad. They’d spent hours catching them, and they needed the money.’

  They always needed the money. Neither of us said it aloud, but amusement died abruptly. He put out a hand.

  ‘Will you let me take that to the post for you?’

  ‘Thanks very much, but don’t bother. I was going anyway.’

  ‘I’d rather you let me take it.’

  ‘Don’t you trust me to post it?’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Rob. He got to his feet and stretched, then gave me that disarming smile of his again. ‘Well, maybe you’ll let me walk you along to the corner, and we can watch each other post it? Come on.’

  The collie got up to follow him, and so did I.

  Ashley, 1835.

  Memories stung him, banishing sleep.

  ‘Nick?’

  ‘My love?’

  ‘He won’t speak? You’re sure he won’t tell on us?’

  ‘Certain. He knows where his duty lies, or, better still, where his meat and drink come from.’

  ‘But your father? Oh, Nick—’

  ‘My father be damned.’

  He had meant it, too. He shut his eyes.

  15

  This night I hold an old accustom’d feast,

  Whereto I have invited many a guest

  Such as I love; and you among the store,

  One more, most welcome, makes my number more.

  Romeo and Juliet, I. i

  When I got back to the cottage there was someone sitting on the seat in the shadow of the lilac tree. My heart jerked painfully, once, then settled back to its even beat as Jeffrey Underhill got to his feet and came out into the mellow sunshine of the lawn.

  We greeted one another. The ‘tycoon’ manner was as much in evidence as before, but somehow scaled down by the setting of lake and sky and the huge trees beyond the orchard. Perhaps a man like Jeffrey Underhill needed rooms and company, the setting of his own kind of jungle. Then I saw that I was wrong. This was still the same high-octane personality, but the mask of power was being held, as it were, deliberately in front of a very ordinary, anxious father. His manner was as smooth, as pleasant, as incisive as before, and with never a hint of worry showing, but the Ashley seventh sense, prompted by what I knew, saw it as the manner of the Chairman of Directors preparing to present an adverse report to his Board. Cathy, I thought, with my heart accelerating ever so slightly, he wants to talk to me about Cathy. I found myself looking away from him, as if it was I who had been at fault rather than my cousins and this man’s daughter. As I led Mr Underhill into the cottage, I reflected, with a twist of wry amusement, that this Chairman of Directors had a very good technique indeed. In this case it had even been unconscious; I thought I could acquit him of using it deliberately on me.

  He settled himself in one of the armchairs as if he had all the time – and the quietest mind – in the world, refused the offer of tea, waved aside my apologies for not having any gin, and opened the meeting without delay.

&nbs
p; ‘I had to come and talk to you, Miss Ashley. Something my daughter Cathy has told me has disturbed me very much.’

  I made some kind of assenting sound, and waited, with what was meant to look like mild inquiry, but the clever dark eyes probed mine for a millisecond, then the brows twitched down, as Mr Underhill registered that I already knew what he was about to tell me.

  He told me, all the same. It was Cathy’s version of the story I had heard from James. Emory – and James passing for Emory – had persuaded the girl that the contents of the Court were legally theirs, and that ‘Cousin Bryony’, when she knew, would not mind a few small objects being abstracted and used straight away, rather than wait for the long processes of law. Cathy had obviously had no idea that the estate must by law be left intact for valuation; and the twins had told her that I, Bryony, was, if not firmly engaged to James, at any rate his for the asking, and therefore an interested party. So she had taken the T’ang horse and the other small objects from the library, and then – this time on her own initiative – the Rackham pictures from the schoolroom. The church, always left unlocked, had been used as a cache and a pickup point.

  Mr Underhill told me the whole story, straight and without excuse, just as he would have put a report across. Facts and only facts. The rest I could supply for myself. He still obviously had no idea that the twins had been playing tricks with identity; he referred all the time to ‘Emory’, with no apparent suspicion that sometimes the man had been James. I looked away from him, kept my thoughts to myself, and worked it out as he talked.

  He had got to my own return from Bavaria. The night when I had inadvertently seen ‘Emory’ in the church, said Jeff Underhill, he had been picking up the pictures which Cathy had taken. They had been hidden in the old ambry which was now blocked from casual sight by the choirmen’s wardrobe. Next day had come my discovery of the theft, and my questions.

  ‘My wife and I guessed right away that Cathy might have something to do with it, but naturally we had to talk to Cathy first, before we could say anything to you.’

  ‘Of course.’ I must have looked surprised. ‘But why should you have guessed that? Had she said anything?’

  He was leaning back in his chair, his eyes on the prospect of leaves and sky beyond the cottage window. He might have been studying the weather, to judge the fishing prospects for the morrow. But then he turned his head, and the eyes that met mine were those of a deeply troubled man.

  ‘I have to be honest with you, Miss Ashley. We guessed it might be our daughter because we have had this kind of problem before.’

  I felt my eyes widen. Though something in me – perhaps that Ashley seventh sense again – had almost seen it coming, I couldn’t think what to say. But he did not wait. If it had to be said, he would say it and have done.

  ‘It started when she was at High School. We lived in California then, just outside Los Angeles, and – well, it’s not perhaps the easiest city for a young boy or girl to grow up in, and Cathy soon got problems. She is –’ a pause, so brief that one hardly registered the effort it hid ‘—a very loving and warm-hearted girl, and she follows her impulses without always seeing where they will take her, or what they will cost. She takes,’ added Jeffrey Underhill, quite unnecessarily, ‘more after her dear mother than after me.’

  I said something that was meant to sound both soothing and noncommittal, and was rewarded by the flash of sudden humour in his face, as he said, with a return to his old manner: ‘I am neither generous nor impulsive, Miss Ashley. Nor am I easily guided. But my wife and daughter are altogether better folks than I can ever be. So when my little Cat got into bad company, the next thing we knew was she was right there in the middle of a full scale classic teenage problem, and believe me, she could have finished anywhere. She was in with a real wild bunch. They used to steal things – things that didn’t matter, but it was stealing for all that – and wreck things, and drive cars away – having fun, they called it, getting kicks. There was this boy she was crazy about, and while that lasted . . . Well, I’ll spare you the rest. She got herself out of it in the end. It took a long time, but, being basically sweet and good like most of these silly kids if they get the chance, she got herself out of it, with God’s help and with ours.’

  He spoke with devastating simplicity. Once again, I could think of nothing to say. But he didn’t seem to expect an answer. He was going on.

  ‘That was one of the reasons we decided to live away from home for a few years. You’ll understand, it doesn’t much matter to me where I’m domiciled, as long as I’m within commuting distance of Houston, Texas, and of New York.’ The gleam of a smile again. ‘Well, I can’t rightly say that Ashley Court is commuter country for New York and my other current ports of call, but as you know, the girls – my wife and Cathy – took a real fancy to it, and things seemed to be working out just fine. Then, as you know, this happened. When you told us there were valuable things missing, we were terribly afraid it was beginning again. When Cat and her set had stolen things before it was a kind of wild thing, not a real sickness; but now we were afraid she was really sick. This kleptomania is a mental thing, you know that, not just a teenage problem that can be gotten through. So Stephanie and I talked it over most of last night, and again this morning, and then we asked Cathy about it. She told us everything. She’d had it on her mind ever since you came here, and she – I think she was glad to tell us.’

  My mind was twisting and turning like some trapped thing trying to find the light. It was worse, far worse than I had thought. Even this minor affair of the ‘disposable assets’ had in it the possible springs of tragedy. Yet one more thing for Twin to answer for . . . I hardly noticed that this time I hadn’t specified which twin.

  ‘But, Mr Underhill, this is awful!’

  He misunderstood me. ‘Miss Ashley, I know that it’s as bad as it can be, and it might look a real hanging matter from where you’re sitting right this minute, but I have to tell you that when Cathy went into all this legal routine about trusts and disposable assets that Emory really owned, and all that stuff, we were so relieved, that our daughter must almost have gotten the impression that what she’d done was quite okay. Which,’ he added, with uncompromising dryness, ‘it was not.’

  ‘Mr Underhill—’

  He lifted a hand about an inch from the arm of the chair, and I stopped. ‘No, let me say it first. I’m not often stuck for words, but I find this very, very hard. We owe you an apology, that goes without saying, and, Miss Ashley, you have it. I must say this as well: if there is anything we can do to put this thing right for you, you have only to ask. That is the least I can say. I’ll get those items back, and into their places, just as if this had never happened, if it takes all I’ve got.’

  Coming from someone like Jeffrey Underhill, it was quite an offer, but somehow it didn’t seem in the least absurd. And he meant every word of it. As for the apology, there was no point in my disclaiming, since for once my honest opinion was probably the exact one that it would comfort him to hear. But before I could speak he said, with another of those probing looks that seemed to get right past the eyes and into the mind: ‘You don’t seem very surprised by what I have been telling you. You knew how the things were taken.’

  ‘Yes. My cousin told me last night.’

  ‘And it troubles you a whole lot, I can see that.’

  ‘Not really. Other things trouble me, but not that. Honestly. I’ll tell you exactly how I feel about it, Mr Underhill. When my cousin told me, I was shocked. It was wrong, though perhaps it wasn’t quite as dishonest as it seemed. But what I was really angry about was the fact that they’d used Cathy. I don’t have to go into the reasons for you – and I certainly didn’t know what you’ve just told me about her trouble, or I’d have been angrier still – but it seemed to me a terrible thing to do, and I said as much. My cousin would pass that on to his brother. As for the horse and other things, please forget them. No, I mean it. Officially they will belong in the end to Emory’s f
amily, and if we start looking for them now to buy them back, all this might have to come to light, and that wouldn’t help anybody. It might even put us on the wrong side of the law.’ I remembered something. ‘Mr Underhill, did Cathy say anything about a church register?’

  ‘A what?’ He sounded blank.

  ‘One of the parish registers they keep in the church. It’s gone missing.’

  ‘She certainly said nothing about that. I’ll ask her. But why should anyone want to take a thing like that? Is it valuable?’

  ‘Not intrinsically. It is very old, and I suppose it’s interesting, but only to local people, one would think.’

  ‘Maybe someone borrowed it for research, and forgot to bring it back.’

  ‘Probably. I only asked because when I saw – er, my cousin that night in the church, I thought he was carrying something like a big book, but it was probably the Rackham pictures.’

  ‘Yes, now, those pictures. They’re a different matter from the other stuff, surely? Aren’t they your own?’

  I nodded. ‘And they’re unique, and recognisable, I’m afraid. If you could get those back for me, Mr Underhill, I’d be terribly grateful. There won’t be any trouble, either, I promise you; I’ll say I sent them for sale myself, but I thought better of it. That should put us all in the clear.’

  ‘You’re very generous.’

  Here I did disclaim, but he insisted on thanking me, and then, as I had half expected, went on to tell me that he and his wife had decided to cut short their tenancy of Ashley Court. They had, he assured me, been considering going well before November, because of my father’s death and the legal business which would ensue. Now they had decided to move immediately to London, staying there for just as long as it took Mr Underhill’s agents to find him a house to rent in Paris. They were going, he said, with a quick look at me, tomorrow. He had talked with Mr Emerson, and all was settled. The rent of the Court was paid till the full term . . . And so on and so forth. Everything but the real reason for the sudden departure.