Black Heather (17 page)

“Oh, Kathleen, don’t be tiresome! She intends that you shall give her all rights to the money if it is found. But Sir Nicholas told her flat out after dinner this evening that he would raze the inn to the ground. He considers it unhealthy to the moors, if you can imagine that!”

I could not but agree with Sir Nicholas privately, at least until someone troubled to refurbish the inn and give it new life and pleasanter legends than those which had succeeded Megan Sedley’s murder. It
was
unhealthy, and Sir Nicholas had made it so with his Hag and his haunts.

“But would he go so far as to make Mrs. Sedley vanish from his own home,
merely to persuade her to sell to him rather than to me?” I asked Elspeth, thinking this latest episode even more insane than her other ideas.

She had moved, perhaps accidentally, between me and the door.

“And if we do not find Grandmama, it will be because he has murdered her!”

“Really, Elspeth! You are being absurd. Go to bed. Your grandmother will return—perhaps she’s returned already—and you will feel like a little silly!” I reached around her and opened the door. She was so very disturbed that I did not think she had all her faculties.

“Then come with me. Prove me wrong.” She was beginning to nudge me toward the gallery, and I felt as though I were being propelled by some force more mental than physical that I could not withstand. I realized that this was partly because of my own uneasy suspicions and partly because my companion aroused in me very nearly as keen a suspicion as did Sir Nicholas himself!

I stopped only long enough to squeeze my foot into my wrinkled but dry left shoe. Elspeth waited in the doorway, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her carefully scuffing her dainty shoe over one of those fresh red-mud spots left by Sir Nicholas’s boots. I was wryly amused at her effort. Obviously, she thought it was a mark she had missed earlier. My first reaction was to reflect upon the oddity of her attempting to conceal evidence of Sir Nicholas’s wickedness when she pretended to dislike him so much. Unless, of course, she thought she was covering traces of someone else’s wickedness!

But as we left the room together and hurried on tiptoe along the gallery, it rather belatedly occurred to me that in all likelihood she really did believe these were someone else’s marks. In that case, she was trying to protect the wrong person. The gallery corridor was still frightfully dark, but the first daylight from some unshuttered window glistened on the frames of various Everett ancestral portraits, and we found our way to the big, sweeping staircase by these reflected gleams of light.

We had barely reached the gallery rail at the top of the stairs, when Elspeth uttered a sharp whispered curse that would have surprised her grandmother and drew back against me. Without questioning her movement, I ran silently back into the gallery and pressed hard into the darkest corner I could find. Elspeth followed me. During those first seconds of our panic, I thought she must have seen the Hag at the very least, for I heard that uneven tap-tap sound near the foot of the stairs. Then I remembered there could be no real Hag. There was only Sir Nicholas and his loathsome disguise. The sound we heard on the lower floor gallery was the dragging step of Ezra Hardwicke.

To my relief he went on along the gallery, and gradually a door closed and his footsteps ceased.

“Perhaps we should have asked him if he has seen your grandmother,” I whispered, but she scorned this impatiently.

“If he has taken her in charge, he isn’t going to tell us, is he? And if we speak to them, they will both be on guard against us. Nicholas probably has the Hardwickes primed for this thing.”

Elspeth hurried lightly to the stairs and down. I followed close upon her heels, until we reached an open door along the gallery, and I saw the bright streak of light from what appeared to be several candelabra. Elspeth pointed to it and whispered, “Grandmama likes a great deal of light. It was that open door which troubled me. From my room I saw the bar of light upon the floor of the corridor. So I got up and went to see. I thought perhaps someone had paid her a visit and left the door partially open.” She paused and looked back at me. “That was more than half an hour ago. I dressed while I waited
...
” Her whispered voice lost its caution. As we approached her grandmother’s door she seemed to grow more and more apprehensive, and to be truthful, I did myself.

I looked down the long gallery with all its Everett faces staring at us as far as we could see, and I noticed the peculiar effect of the early morning breeze, which turned this corridor into a whispering gallery, not a very comfortable background for my own growing fears. It was as if a breath of the evil in the Hag’s Head had blown across the moor to taint this house.

Elspeth pushed open the door of Mrs. Sedley’s room and murmured huskily, “Kate, oh Kate, where can she be?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I needed no d
istressed exclamations from Elspeth to warn me that Mrs. Sedley had not yet returned to her room, but I felt we could do considerably more than merely wring our hands and wail.

“Find out which of her garments are missing. In that way we can know whether she left of her own accord.”

“Yes ... of course. I should have thought.” She opened the big, old-fashioned wardrobe at one side of the room as I looked around and under Mrs. Sedley’s bed. Her bed slippers were still here, but there were no shoes.

“Who undressed your grandmother last night?” I asked, puzzled about the missing shoes. In her own household, of course, her shoes would be placed with the rest of her footgear in cupboard or wardrobe, but here, since she was upon a mere one-night visit, her shoes might have been left at the side of her bed. The only alternative was the wardrobe.

“Mrs. Hardwicke helped me. One of the maids was about to do so, but that dreadful housekeeper volunteered. Grandmama was not well, you know.
She’d asked Nicholas straight out to spare the inn if he bought it, and as you know, he refused. He must always have hated Grandmama, ever since she interfered in his romance with Aunt Megan, but you know Grandmama. Once he came into the title, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. It is the same thing with Patrick and me.”

“Patrick and you!” I echoed, wondering if she meant what she seemed to mean, that there was something more between them, an understanding that would be as shocking to Mrs. Sedley as—I confess—it was to me. For no matter how charming or likable Patrick Kelleher might be, the fact was that he had married Elspeth’s Aunt Megan, and worse, was her widower, with a taint, obscure but present, of the wife-murderer.

“Yes. You know she detests poor Uncle Patrick. But mark me, he was welcome enough as a husband for Aunt Megan, when Grandmama thought he was a great Irish peer. And if he were to find Aunt Megan’s money now, he would be charming and el
i
gible once more.”

But I disagreed. “Not if your grandmother knows it is her own money that makes him charming and eligible.”

She started to say something furious but broke off, as though suddenly aware of the far more important matter that faced us.

“Her day gown is here, and her cloak and petticoats. Yes, and her stockings.”

“What about her shoes?” I asked.

“No. It seems to me that I saw old Hardwicke drop them by the bed.”

“But they aren’t here, Elspeth. See for yourself. What about her bed wrapper?”

“Gone,” said Elspeth, upon examination. “That should mean something.”

I clung to any slight favorable sign. “But don’t you see? It means she left the room on her own initiative, else they would not have reason to think of her slippers. And she was walking, else she would not have worn her shoes.”

Elspeth’s depressed spirits suddenly lifted.

“She is wandering about in this house, somewhere. But where? And for what reason?”

I glanced out into the gallery, and she joined me as I considered this ordinary—yet so extraordinary—thing which had happened. Had it been anyone but Mrs. Sedley, there could have been a dozen reasons for leaving this room dressed only in night clothing and walking shoes. The corridors would be cold to the feet of a woman in bed slippers. But for Mrs. Sedley, in her painful, rheumatic condition, it was foolhardy. There was no sense in it. I looked back at her bed. Even the bell cord to summon the servants or other help was near at hand.

Whatever Elspeth’s objections, I knew there was nothing for it now but to search the entire Everett Hall, room by room, bedchamber by bedchamber. I said so to Elspeth. She reacted with violence that confused and worried me, for until this moment she had given every indication of being more alarmed than I about this very odd disappearance. Why then did she fear to search the Hall? What was she afraid of finding?

Elspeth caught my arm as I started into the gallery.

“But if the Hardwickes have persuaded her ... of if Nicholas ... I mean to say, can there be some reason we don’t suspect?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Come along.” Either she wished to find her grandmother or she did not. Her attitude was ambiguous, but I had made up my mind she was going to carry through despite one or the other of her fears.

She followed along behind me, down the gallery in the most hesitant way, as though I had suggested something hitherto undreamed of. As for me, I felt that I had been challenged by this silly little mystery. I knew perfectly well we were going to find Mrs. Sedley on some normal errand, discussing a household matter with the Hardwickes or even arguing the sale of the Hag’s Head with our host.

Elspeth tapped upon my shoulder. “Perhaps it would be best if we listen at each door, to be quite sure, before we knock.”

I was out of all patience with her. “Really, Elspeth, talk of our interrupting, which seems to concern you so closely! How would it appear to Sir Nicholas or even Mrs. Hardwicke, if they caught us all bent over listening at keyholes and otherwise appearing to be mindless gudgeons?” I hope she understood that we must not place ourselves at the mercy of the slightly sinister people in this house. Whatever we did, we must be able to defend our own actions legally. We were dealing, when all was said, with the magistrate of this parish, and it would go hard and shamefully with us if we had no legal recourse with all our prowling about a house that was not ours.

I felt a tiny, fluttering panic in my stomach that threatened to grow as I walked silently but purposefully along the whispering gallery, past the many portraits that watch us out of dead Everett eyes, but I was determined that my companion should not guess my own state of nerves.

At the first door beyond Elspeth’s own, I paused and rapped lightly. All was silent within. I tried the latch. It opened under my touch, and I heard Elspeth catch her breath and put out her hand, either to help or to stop me—I could not be sure which. She need not have concerned herself either way. The door opened so easily that I knew that nothing sinister would be found within. The stuffy little room was dark, however, and the light from the gallery was only filtered in from some distant uncovered window at the end of the corridor. I made my way across the room, avoiding the furniture by instinct, and put aside the portieres just enough to gaze around. The room had been a study but was clearly not in use at present. There was just enough dust upon the dark and gloomy
furniture, the writing table, and the crowded bookshelves to suggest that Mrs. Hardwicke saw to its occasional cleaning but that the master of Everett Hall seldom ventured within. There were no cupboards, wardrobes, water closets, or other places by which the strange disappearance of Mrs. Sedley might be accounted for.

Elspeth had remained at the door but boldly walked in and looked around, once it seemed sure I would find no signs of human habitation.

I was considerably ahead of her when I tried the next room along the gallery. It proved to be a utility closet of sorts, and I had looked into the further room before she joined me. This was a large, comfortable study, very male, with much-used leather furnishings and a lamp burning low upon a large and handsome escritoire. I was sure it must belong to Sir Nicholas, who had to all indications very recently left it. Various legal documents lay around, some opened, with penned remarks on the margins, and I guessed from these that Sir Nicholas took the legal responsibilities of his position very seriously. What a great pity, I thought, that he should have stooped to his shameful and perhaps criminal tricks in order to obtain that inn, when he showed every other sign of being a man of talent and attainment!

“What if he should find us here?” Elspeth whispered, looking over her shoulder worriedly.

“In that event,” I said, glancing around to see if there were any red-mud footprints, “we will ask him kindly, at his leisure, to produce your grandmama for us.”

“Kate, you would never!”

I felt this naive incredulity deserved no response, and anyway, I had discovered one of those telltale marks of red mud upon the carpet. So Sir Nicholas had been in here, as I suspected, and had left as a double proof to me the marks of the Hag who had made as if to strangle me earlier in the evening. No matter how many proofs I might find, each of them was a keener disappointment. I glanced out the big windows upon the calm park, still shrouded in gray dawn with just a hint of the sunrise that must be illuminating the eastern sky at this moment. It was this pink reflection of dark, I thought, which I saw now across the moors to the south and west, amid that gray pile called the Hag’s Head. It was not a ghostly candle at all. I stared at it for several seconds, until recalled to what Elspeth conceived to be our great danger. And of course she could well have been right.

“What are you looking at on the moor? There is nothing one can see at this hour. Do come out of here before he catches us.”

I moved rapidly through the room toward her, skirting the big, masculine, rather cluttered furnishings, careful not to glance at the mark on the carpet for fear she would try to destroy it as she had those on the carpets upstairs. I was still quite
sure she thought she was destroying evidence against someone else. I was puzzled as to what person she might imagine she was protecting.

We had searched the final rooms on the west face of Everett Hall to the north corner ballroom without finding anything living. The ballroom appeared to be long unused and completely disguised by covers that shrouded everything, even the large crystal lusters.

Elspeth looked around, her lips curving with contempt. She murmured, still in her husky whisper, “Once on a time, before ever Patrick came back and told me the straight of things about Nicholas and Aunt Megan, I used to fancy I should like to be Lady Everett. It was the hope of turning out this room, removing the Holland covers, polishing those lusters, seeing the room shimmer with the light of hundreds of candles
...”

I looked at her curiously. It was evident no thought of Sir Nicholas’s many attractions had ever entered her head. What sorrows he must have endured over the murder of Megan Kelleher, to have left this room untended and unused for so many years! But if he himself had murdered his love because she would not leave her gay and faithless husband, then this might explain Elspeth’s feelings. It was dreadful. I refused to believe it of him. The masquerade as the Hag, perhaps; the attempted attack on me; but how to explain his gentle moments in my presence? There was no reasoning it out. I only knew, as I looked around that room, moving aside the covers in a hopeless search for signs of Mrs. Sedley, that it would not have needed the glories of this room to make Sir Nicholas seen desirable to me.

Elspeth had gone over to the north windows and turned back to face me quickly, her cheeks flushed, her breath short and nervous.

“What is out there?” I asked, starting toward her.

“Nothing. Only the stable. No one there, thank God!”

Not trusting her, I looked out over her shoulder but saw only the eastern skyline over the high peaks on the moor, and, much nearer, the stables, with one young stallion partially visible, kicking up a small fuss. I started to make some remark about the stallion, an aimless question, but I forgot it immediately when she whispered, “Sh!
”
and gestured toward the door into the gallery.

We had left it ajar, and yet I heard nothing. We stood there staring apprehensively at each other. A floor creaked, and I whispered, “The stairs, I think,” but she shook her head.

“Probably one of the Hardwickes at the other end of the gallery.”

We waited until no more sounds were heard, and then, after glancing in at doors across the gallery, I heard a sleepy girl’s voice respond, “Aye, mum. Is it me and Rose yer wantin’, Miz Hardwicke?”

Deeply offended at the thought of my being mistaken for Mrs. Hardwicke, even in the semidarkness, I gave a muffled “No” and retired quickly into the corridor, pausing only long enough to get my bearings before hurrying up the main staircase. My brief glance out of doors had only made the interior of the Hall look darker, more impenetrable afterward.

As for Elspeth, I had lost all patience with her obstructive behavior. I knew she was following me, daintily and fearfully, somewhere in the dark lower regions of the staircase, but I no longer waited for her. After all my efforts to soothe Elspeth’s fears, I was becoming convinced that Mrs. Sedley’s disappearance was entirely her own idea. Whether she was abetted in this odd scheme by her granddaughter, I could not be sure, but I was beginning to suspect that if her scheme was not known to Elspeth, then the girl had two worries, and my search was beginning to cause her more concern than the queer way in which Mrs. Sedley had vanished.

I looked into my own bedchamber and out again, but the room beyond was locked, and after trying the latch vainly several times, I hurried on to the adjoining room, which proved to be nothing more than a bookroom so narrow and windowless that I could scarcely turn around in it without knocking down a dozen monstrously ancient and dusty books.

“Nothing in here,” I whispered loudly, hearing what I took to be Elspeth’s footsteps in the gallery
approaching the door. She did not reply, and I groped my way to the end of the little closet, raising my voice until it was perfectly audible to her. “Open the door wider, please. There doesn’t seem to be a window.”

But the small amount of light drifting in from the gallery began to fade. I looked around, realized what was happening, and rushed toward the door —too late! It had closed as gently and silently as if controlled by invisible threads. I was not worried immediately. It was one of those odd and ridiculous accidents which I might have expected, and without undo excitement, but the nasty little business of feeling my way through that book-lined passage and then finding the door would not open, gave me such a chilling fear as only the masquerading Hag had produced. Trying the latch again and calling in a fierce whisper to Elspeth did not prevent me from remembering the Hag, and won
d
ering if I was indeed alone in the intense darkness of this long, narrow, cof
f
in
-
like closet.