Cavalier Case (5 page)

Furthermore, Jemima could also imagine Zena—quite apart from her resemblance to Decimus—as one of those heroines of the English Civil War who fought alongside their men. Like Olivia Lackland herself perhaps, defending her house and exhorting her troops: "like a man for her courage, like a lion for her heart, hut like a woman after the battle for her tender mercy towards the sufferers" in the pious words of "Heaven's True Mourning." She wasn't quite sure about Zcna's "tender mercy" but the rest seemed to fit.

"I think you may know a Cambridge friend of mine, Rupert Uurham," began Jemima rather diffidently. The absent-minded Dr. Uurham, in his reviews, had been known to practice the art of criticism quite robustly but perhaps a historical novelist was immune ... It turned out to be a gaffe.

'Wasn't that the man who gave your last book such a terrible review, Zeenie.'" Dan shot his sister a look of open, impudent malice. From his expression, Jemima had a sense that this was a battle between the handsomer brother and the cleverer sister—reversing the traditional expectations for their respective sexes—begun in early childhood and continued ever since.

But to Jemima's relief, Zena Meredith ignored both remarks. With a sudden animation which made her look for the first time actually rather pretty, she took Jemima's arm and turned her in another direction. Jemima found that, still looking upwards, she was now facing a door off the hall above her.

"The Long Gallery," said Zena Meredith. "I want to show it to you myself. No, Dan. I want to do it straight away. Why don't you go and return Alix Carstairs' call? She's rung twice since you've been here." In her eagerness, Zena Meredith positively hustled Jemima up the stairs, through the open door—and into a long light room with high arched windows. As its name betokened, it was long. It was also totally empty. There was not even a carpet on the floor, let alone curtains at the enormous windows. Light flooded the gallery, and through the windows, Jemima got for the first time an extraordinary view of the formal garden, realised that the fourth side of the garden was in fact the hills and hedges of Taynfordshire. "So does thy swan in parting soar ..." This must be the "green world below" to which Decimus had referred! Recalling the lines, Jemima felt her own spirits soar with the swan.

And here too in this Long Gallery Olivia Lackland had once walked, studying her books, she thought. Books written in Latin which some at the time had thought unsuitable to her sex. Rupert Durham, sound about women in the seventeenth, if not the twentieth century, had thrown off some useful guidelines to the habits of the ladies of the day.

"And my brother wants to make this into a tennis club!" The bitterness in Zena Meredith's voice could not be missed. "The Lackland to follow the Plantaganet. Or rather, as no doubt it will be called, the Lacky to follow the Planty. With large photographs of himself in place of the family portraits, which he will probably sell- While Charlotte will run another of her cakeshops in a corner. Later on no doubt the gardens will be turned into a Cavalier theme park."

"I don't believe it!" Jemima made the exclamation in spite of herself. Was that what Dan Lackland had meant earlier when he declared: "I shall manage - in my own way."

"Now come on, Zeenie, no hysterics please. It's far too soon to be carrying on like that, as though Cousin Tommy's grave was being robbed." Dan Lackland spoke easily from the doorway.

"It's not Cousin Tommy's grave - " began Zena.

"Cool it, Zeenie, will you?" It was a command. Jemima had a feeling that the command was connected more with her own presence than with the subject of the future Lackland Court Tennis Club.

Dan's voice echoed in the long empty room. "We've got Jemima's ghost programme to look forward to, before anything is decided. That's really going to help us get publicity. I've no intention of upsetting the Decimus Ghost with anything as sordid as the sheer economics of running this place until her programme is completed."

Jemima, still reeling from the notion that this stately melancholy beauty, so redolent of Decimus and Olivia, was to be converted someday into a tennis club along the lines of the Plantaganet, said nothing.

"And my biography of Decimus?" persisted Zena. "For which I need the library. The library intact. My first biography, as you know, for which as it happens I have a contract. You promised me. You gave me your word."

As Jemima made a mental note to question Zena at some later date about this, her "first biography," Dan strode rapidly into the room. He stood for a moment without speaking, gazing at his sister. She returned his look levelly, almost insolently. Then both were distracted by the voice of Haygarth from the door.

"I beg your pardon, m'lord, but Miss Carstairs has telephoned again from the Plantaganet Club and asked you to telephone her back as soon as possible. On her private number. And Miss Zena, Mr. Marcus Meredith will be in the office until one o'clock when he goes to the House of Commons. But he hopes to meet you in the Central Lobby at eight o'clock this evening."

"But Marcus
knows
I'm not going back to London," exclaimed Zena. "There's so much to do here." Dismissing the suhject, she turned to her brother. "Go on Dan, poor Alix Carstairs is still waiting for your call." All the same, as Dan turned and went down the stairs, Zena Meredith followed him. It was as though she was irresistibly drawn either to his presence or their shared struggle, Jemima was not quite sure which. That left Jemima still in the Long Gallery, and somewhat to her surprise, still in the presence of the butler.

Haygarth stared at her, and then in his formal voice, which made Kim sound more like a butler in a stage play of the thirties than the kind of Italian manservants Jemima had previously encountered in the homes of the rich, he proceeded to address her: "I wish to communicate to you something concerning the Decimus Ghost, understanding your interest in the same, madam."

Jemima smiled warmly. "I hear you know all the family history."

"I did believe so, madam." Haygarth was increasingly lugubrious. "I certainly did believe so. But now I have formed a very different impression about recent events at Lackland Court. I believe there to be danger here and in particular the death of his late Lordship has convinced me—" Haygarth stopped. "The ghost is still walking," he added in a very low hurried voice.

Jemima realised they were no longer alone. Zena Meredith had returned. She scarcely looked at the butler, and therefore it was impossible to tell whether she had overheard his last incomplete remark. Jemima, her curiosity aroused, decided that where the butler was concerned, discretion was probably essential if she was to receive confidential information. So she contented herself with saying rather vaguely: "Thank you so much, Mr. Haygarth, for filling me in on those historical details. I hope we may talk again in the course of researching the programme."

The butler said nothing but merely bowed his head gravely. Nor for the rest of the day, in the course of which he performed a number of services for Jemima, such as serving her food, pouring her drink, and finally helping her back into Dan Lackland's car (he was dashing up to London and back "for a business meeting"), did he make any allusion to their brief snatched conversation.

Dan did make an allusion to it however.

"Zena told me that old Haygarth did get going on all the family stuff. As I warned you, he can be a fearful old bore, can't he?"

"Oh he didn't bore me for long, just a few dates, and some information about the garden."

The mention of the garden temporarily distracted Dan. "As you can see, there we have real problems," he said gloomily. "Beautiful, isn't it? Cousin Beatrice was a terrific gardener - terrific with the aid of five other gardeners and a boy. Now what do we do? Gawain would love to lay his hands on it, but we can't have that - look what he did to Taynford Grange - and the real gardener is of course Zena, but she wants to restore it to the original seventeenth-century design, which would cost a fortune - " Dan heaved an exasperated sigh. "But you had a good view of it from the Long Gallery. Next time I'll take you up on the battlements, if you've got a head for heights. There's a little spiral staircase just off the Long Gallery; a later addition - one of the few - since the days of Decimus, but convenient."

"Convenient for what?" Jemima was still brooding over Dan Lackland's evident, indeed marked, disinclination to let her interview Haygarth. Jemima Shore was certainly not to be circumvented quite so easily. She had every intention of having a private talk with the butler on her next visit to Lackland Court. Preferably with the agreement of the present Lord Lackland but definitely not in his presence. She felt that she owed it to the shade of the poet, or as Handsome Dan himself would have put it, the Decimus Ghost.

Cavalier Masquerade

He was descending the staircase quite slowly; in the dim light the pointed white lace of his broad collar contrasting with the blackness of the armour, and the length of his figure exaggerated by the long boots he wore; there was a cloak on one shoulder and he held his plumed hat in his left hand . . . For a moment the whole image had the quality of a dream for Jemima—one of those recurring dreams she had been having lately about Decimus which both plagued and excited her. One of them had been startlingly erotic: and she had half-awoken in the darkness to find Cass's urgent body seeking hers. In that drowsy instant, she remembered to her shame, she had experienced a strange yearning disappointment that it was familiar Cass, not the unknown poet, before giving herself to him.

But this was not a dream. Nor was a ghost walking: in spite of the fact that the figure of Decimus—as it seemed—might well have been supposed by a more fanciful person than Jemima to have emerged out of the Van Dyck portrait at the head of the stairs. Jemima however did not suppose that, as she stood at the bottom of the stairs at Lackland Court, on her second visit in ten days.

Once she had restored herself to a sense of proper reality, she was busy wondering more practically: who on earth has bothered to dress up for my benefit? It could hardly be Lord Lackland, the obvious candidate in a sense, standing at her elbow as he had done on the occasion of her first visit, but just a little closer, even perhaps just a little too close for the kind of relationship Jemima hoped they were having: that is, strictly professional. On the other hand, she had to admit that the proximity was not quite so unwelcome as it might have been, for example, ten days ago. You had to grant that the man had charm (well, yes, damn it, he was famous for it - nor had the crowd nicknamed him Handsome Dan for nothing) even if it was a charm based mainly on excellent attentive manners and a seductive voice - something to which Jemima was always rather partial. More earthily, maybe it was merely that taste for Eau Sauvage which he shared with Cass . . .

Her thoughts returned to the seventeenth-century masquerader before her. Not Dan Lackland, then, but who? It was Dan himself who gave her the answer in a voice which remained pleasantly low but contained at the same time an audible undercurrent of irritation.

"Zeenie! What the hell are you trying to prove now?"

Zena Meredith had reached the bottom of the staircase and the light fell on her pale face, the dark eyes so like her ancestor's. In spite of that resemblance, in spite of Zena's height, Jemima wondered how on earth she could ever have mistaken her for a man. A trick of the light: it was noon in high summer but the staircase was still encased in its own perpetual dusk (a fact which, it occurred to her, must have helped on the legend of the ghost in the past). The portrait at the head of the stairs, which was dramatically lit by hidden spotlights - a recent innovation presumably - made the gloom of the stairs seem even greater in contrast.

Zena Meredith gave a half-smile, more a whimsical turning of the lips which made the resemblance to Decimus, in face at least, even more remarkable. In her Cavalier boots with their heels, she was able to gaze at her brother directly in the eye.

'Why so sharp, Dan?" she said. "Did you think perhaps I was the uecirnus Ghost come to claim you?" Zena mockingly extended one long white hand—and her hand too had the splayed fingers of the poet.

"Don't be more ridiculous than you can help, Zeenie." Dan was treating his sister as some kind of turbulent little girl, the girl she must have been in their shared childhood. And yet, thought Jemima, this was no little girl, but a woman approaching forty, a woman moreover who had carved out an estimable career as a historical novelist— whatever you thought of the genre, she was a serious exponent of it—even if Zena had not secured the radiant newspaper-headline fame of her brother.

Zena abandoned her predatory pose and turned her attention to Jemima.

"As a matter of fact, I've had it for ages. I had it made for a fancy dress ball—Come as Your Own Ancestor—oh years ago. Don't you remember? You refused to go. Some match or other. So I went as Decimus. But I thought this would be my costume for the Cavalier Celebration," she began. "Since you wouldn't let me enact Olivia— surely Charlotte is not quite right?—and since there are a number of candidates for Lady Isabella Clare, I thought I would enact the ghost of Decimus himself. You be Decimus in Part One, I'll be the ghost in Part Two. Quite an amusing notion, isn't it?"

"No, it bloody well is not," interrupted her brother furiously. "So that's your game. Well, it's not mine. And just to remind you, this is my house, and if there's any doubt about that, the entire Cavalier Celebration, musketeers, schmusketeers and what have you, can go and stuff their pikes up their—" Handsome Dan broke off in what he made clear was deference to Jemima alone.

His sister still looked amused rather than abashed. "Oh, haven't you heard? Then let me be the first to tell you, set your mind at rest, as it were." She paused dramatically and gave a half-bow, half-flourish, that included the plumed hat and cloak on her arm.

"There's a very good chance that the Cavalier Celebration is now going to be held at Taynford Grange," said Zena Meredith. "Nothing to do with Lackland Court at all. Relax," she added. Jemima thought that was all, then suddenly Zena brushed Dan's face lightly with the broad plume in her hat. "Relax," she said again, passing the plume once more very lightly across his face.

It would be fair to say that of the two of them standing there, Dan Lackland and Jemima Shore, to whom this news came as a surprise, Jemima actually looked the most shocked. Either the soft tickle of the feather had soothed him - an unlikely thought - or the deliberate provocation of his sister had left Dan Lackland determined to show no emotion whatsoever. In any case, Jemima had no idea whether Dan felt anything like her own personal dismay.

No Cavalier Celebration, an August pageant re-enacting the various stages in the history of Taynford from the battle to the siege, or rather no Celebration at Lackland Court itself! And yet this recreation, a sort of son et lumi - re with tickets sold to the public, was scheduled to play an important part in the Lackland Court episode of the Megalith ghost series. A good deal of the episode had been positively planned round the Cavalier Celebration. Schedules had been drawn up. Furthermore Spike Thompson had been tentatively engaged as cameraman: Spike Thompson, Megalith's most famed and feared employee, famed for the imaginative brilliance of his camerawork, feared for the imaginative brilliance of his expense sheets. (Already cynical members of the Megalith staff such as Cherry and Guthrie Carlyle were laying bets as to whether Spike would, among other things, claim to have purchased his own seventeenth-century outfit for verisimilitude at the Cavalier Celebration.)

Worse than that, it sounded as if the whole Cavalier Celebration had been hijacked by Lady Manfred and would now take place at Taynford Grange. No, to be fair, Jane Manfred had not necessarily instigated the transference; it might be that Zena Meredith had organised the whole thing as part of her cradle-onwards fight with her sibling. All the same, Jemima did not underestimate the magnitude of the disaster (for her) if this news was true.

For behold, here was Taynford Grange, now with its very own ghost, details of which Jemima had by now quite forgotten, but which had been enough to fascinate Cy. More than that, Taynford Grange now had its own highly picturesque—in any terms including televisual—Cavalier Celebration. And Taynford Grange had Lady Manfred. How was she, Jemima, to hold off Cy Fredericks now from cancelling the Lackland Court episode altogether—poetic images of Decimus, manuscripts of the poems and all? Jemima desperately tried to remember where Cy was supposed to be at this precise moment, never an easy act of recollection at the best of times. Zimbabwe, Salzburg, Buenos Aires? What ill luck if he was in fact in England, now of all times when he was definitely not needed, in England and at Megalithic House!

"Taynford Grange indeed! Do you realise we were raising funds for this house from that Celebration?" 

Jemima, who had not realised it, suddenly understood that the famous Cavalier Celebration was actually going to support the future Lackland Court Country Club. 

Dan went on: "Zena, I could kill you," said without emotion however. Then he added: "We'll see what Jane herself says about that. She's coming to lunch. To talk about the Lackland Court Tennis Club. As a potential investor. She understands the need to save Lackland. Perhaps you didn't know
that
." He shot a sardonic look at his sister.

The ensuing lunch was an awkward meal, Jane Manfred—as usual without Lord Manfred—was not the only unexpected addition to the party, unexpected not only by Zena but also, it transpired, by the hostess, Charlotte, although she tried to cover the fact up with a welcome which was almost embarrassingly warm. Then Marcus Meredith arrived just before lunch, that sober-looking man Jemima had last seen at the Plantaganet Club. Marcus, unlike Jane Manfred, was not expected by Dan, but was expected by Charlotte and Zena.

The fact that the sudden arrival of halcyon weather allowed a long table to be set outdoors on the terrace overlooking the stately garden probably saved the whole occasion from being even more awkward than it was. Haygarth simply went on adding chairs and additional little tables, to be buried beneath a heavy white linen cloth laboriously but efficiently. Meanwhile Dan poured out Pimms and Charlotte handed round home-made lemonade with her usual placating air.

Jemima studied the Meredith children. There were four of them altogether: two bubbly flaxen-haired little girls and a rather pugnacious small boy, also white-blond, a miniature version of his father; then there was Nell, quite a lot older, her face half-shrouded in a bush of very curly dark hair, darker altogether, quieter, presumably the daughter of Dan's first marriage. The prattle of the younger Merediths, to say nothing of the prattle of the nanny, an Irish girl called Nuala (with strong views on early-evening television which she was determined to share with Jemima), did bridge some of the awkward silences. All the same, for all the apparent prettiness of the pastoral scene, she felt that the family group was ridden by tensions unknown to her, quite apart from Zena's dispute with Dan.

Was it Jemima's imagination or was there something additionally Cinderella-like about Nell Meredith? It was hardly surprising that the children of Dan's second marriage should have this angelic fairness, given the blond looks of both their parents; but it did have the effect of making Nell the odd one out. Then she seemed much less well dressed in a conventional sense than her siblings; or perhaps it was her own choice to wear a dirty T-shirt and jeans which were clearly too big. The scarf she had tied round her curly hair also had a dingy or at least ragged look. At any rate Nell had, on close inspection, a sad sulky air, which contrasted both with the celebrated debonair charm of her father, and with the other children's ebullience. When Nuala - in full spate on the subject of
Neighbours
- appealed to her to confirm some point, Nell said absolutely nothing, but merely looked resolutely at her own plate. The small boy known as Dessie (for Uecimus) blew a kind of raspberry at his stepsister before collapsing in a cloud of giggles.

"Dessie," began Nuala sternly. Jemima left her to it. Besides, behind her she could hear the butler Haygarth giving a heavily impatient sigh. It was ironic that Jemima had actually engineered this second visit to Lackland Court in the first place - although Dan Lackland had to cooperated eagerly—partly to have a calmer look at the library and partly to talk privately with Haygarth. Here at lunch she was involved at one end in nursery politics—"I'll get you, you horrid little brat," she heard Nell suddenly hiss at Dessie. Nell's sullen expression was momentarily transformed into one of quite violent dislike, which had at least the effect of bringing an elfin face beneath its fuzzy curtain of hair to life. At the other end of the table there was warfare too, equally malevolent if less overtly insulting.

It was all very well turning romantically back to the past, thought Jemima; she herself was looking forward to a session in the library after lunch with Zena as her ostensible guide (Dan permitting) and Rupert Durham as her unseen companion. They would discuss the interesting contemporary variants on the Swan poem: "I fain would be a swan," for example, was surely a copyist's error for "I fain would be thy swan," since it completely changed the meaning. As for "I fain would be thy swain," that was surely too dull a rendering for Decimus, who was already Olivia's swain in every sense of the word. All the same it would be good to hear Zena's own ideas on the subject, from the family point of view as it were.

But these modern Merediths appeared to be dominated by another more immediate past than their glamorous literary ancestry: their own childhood and youth. Then there was Charlotte's engaging child- wifeliness, treating Dan the male as the ultimate court of appeal in a way which made the middle-class only child Jemima—not used to such built-in deference—uncomfortable. Did Olivia Lackland and the seventeenth-century Meredith sisters, let alone the debatable Lady Isabella Clare, treat Decimus with that kind of female submissiveness?

As for Marcus Meredith, the only other male present, if you did not count Dessie as being a mere child (or Haygarth for being a mere butler), his personality was even less forceful at Lackland Court than it had been at the Plantaganet Club when Jemima had witnessed him obediently playing tennis with his political boss. Jemima put Marcus age as nearer to that of Dan than that of Zena. She gathered that he too had formed part of the Meredith nursery in his youth, since his father had been killed in action on D-Day. There was even some family banter—slightly more friendly family hanter—about Marcus having been his cousin Dan's heir up until the birth of little Dessie, his fourth child.

"Seeing as young Dessie did me out of my position as heir presumptive he might at least stop kicking me under the table. In fact I should really be kicking him"—that sort ofthing, ponderous perhaps but not particularly lethal.