Death in the Castle (18 page)

“Here, Sir Richard,” Wells called.

“Richard!” Lady Mary cried at the door. “You promised me you wouldn’t go there again and you have—I can see you have! Ah, that’s where you were in the night!”

Sir Richard looked at them blankly.

He put his hands to his forehead muttering, “I’ve had a strange dream—very strange!”

“You have been there again,” Lady Mary insisted. She came in and clung to his arm. “What are you hiding in that place? Tell me—you must tell me. I heard something—someone talking—saying such strange things.”

“You know what’s there,” he said. He tried to shake her off but she would not yield. “You’ve been there.”

“I haven’t been there for years.”

“Books,” he said. “Nothing but old books—and—and—a man’s privacy.”

“You’re hiding something!”

“I have nothing,” he cried with sudden anger. “Not even—a—a—a child. I don’t have a child, I tell you!”

Her hands dropped from his arm. She said slowly, “You never forgive me, do you, Richard?”

“No one to—to—take my place … the throne,” he muttered dully.

Wells stepped forward, shaking as if in a palsy, “Sir Richard, please, you’re not yourself.”

He led Sir Richard to a chair and helped him to be seated. “Lady Mary, if I may suggest—Kate, telephone Dr. Briggs, and fetch Mr. Webster. There’s more here than you and I can manage—Don’t stand there like stone!”

She felt like stone. The quarrel between these two whom she had never heard quarrel—what was this quarrel?
What throne?

“Kate!” Wells shouted.

She looked into his angry eyes and, terrified, ran out of the room to the telephone and dialed frantically.

“Dr. Briggs? If you please—this is Kate at the castle. We’re in great trouble, sir. … Both of them—like they were dreaming something. … No, sir, I never did see them like this. … Thank you, sir.”

She put up the receiver and knocked on Philip Webster’s door. He opened it immediately and came out dressed in his wrinkled tweeds but smelling of Pear’s Soap. “Ah, good morning, Kate.”

“Please, Mr. Webster,” she said breathlessly, “the Americans are acting as if they’re taking the castle tomorrow.”

“What!” he exclaimed.

“Yes, sir, and Sir Richard and Lady Mary are being very odd, too.”

“Where are they?”

“In Sir Richard’s room.”

He strode off and she followed. When they reached the room, Kate could not believe what she saw. Wells was gone, and Sir Richard and Lady Mary were sitting at the small table by the window drinking tea together out of the same cup, as though there had been no quarrel. Webster paused at the door, unseen, and Kate waited behind him. The two at the table were talking together amicably.

“I tell you, my dear,” Sir Richard was saying, “everything is quite all right. Blayne has my permission to take the measurements and so on. After all, he’s not tearing down the castle. Nothing is settled yet and it’s common sense that his men can’t idle about. He’s paying them, you know, and they may as well be doing something, even if it’s no use in case we do not proceed. But if it troubles you, I’ll have it all stopped, of course.”

Lady Mary handed him the cup. “Do you want to get rid of the castle, Richard?”

Sir Richard waved the cup away. “You finish it, my dear.” He felt for his pipe in his pocket. “It’s you I think of—you couldn’t live without the castle, could you now, my dear? Really, I mean.”

Lady Mary considered. “One never knows,” she said thoughtfully. “One never knows what one can do until one knows one must. In case one doesn’t find the treasure—”

“You’re not giving up, I hope,” Sir Richard said. He lit his pipe and drew on it with enormous puffs of smoke. “It doesn’t do to give up, you know. Certainly I never knew you to give up.”

“I don’t see anything wrong here,” Webster said in a low voice and over his shoulder to Kate.

Nevertheless he entered the room. “Are you all right. Sir Richard?” he inquired.

Sir Richard looked up, surprised. “I? Oh quite! What makes you ask? Wonderful morning and all that! We’ve been having a little chat. Come in, Kate. I haven’t seen you this morning. You’re looking peaked—Isn’t she, my dear?”

Kate had followed Webster into the room and stood there, puzzled, half awkward. Sir Richard reached for her hand.

“You should see the doctor, Kate. Her hand’s hot, Webster.” He fondled it a moment. They were all looking at her and she snatched her hand away. Sir Richard had never before taken her hand.

“Lady Mary,” she said with determination. “You did say that last night you heard a real voice.”

Lady Mary laughed. There was a tinge of pink in her cheeks. “Did I?”

Webster sat down quickly. “Ah yes—you were to find some sort of treasure, weren’t you?”

Kate would not yield. “My lady, you said—”

“Did you or did you not find any treasure, my love?” Sir Richard inquired. “It’s quite possible, you know, Webster. One does find the oddest things—the ruby, you remember—did I tell you I had it set in a heavy gold ring? I must show it to you. Kate, where did I put the ring?”

“I’ve never seen it,” Kate said bluntly. “I never knew you had such a ring, Sir Richard.”

“Oh come now,” Sir Richard said, “Everybody’s seen the ring. I’m immensely proud of it. I don’t wear it all the time—it’s much too conspicuous, unless one’s a king, of course. … There always that chance—”

“What chance?” Kate asked.

Sir Richard smiled. “The chance of—anything,” he said, “the chance of finding a treasure, for example—or of selling the castle—or not selling it—” He flung out his hand in an expansive gesture.

Webster rose. “The next thing you know we’ll be drawing up papers and asking for signatures.”

“Perhaps it’s the only way to break the hold of the past,” Sir Richard said.

“But the treasure—”

“Yes, my love.” He turned to Lady Mary indulgently. “It is said that every castle has a treasure.”

“My lady! Sir Richard!” Kate gasped, but no one seemed to hear her.

“Such a nice young man,” Lady Mary said softly. “I rather think I’d like to call him John. Would it be all right for me to do so, Richard?”

“It would indeed, my dear. After all, you have had some difficulty in remembering his proper name.”

She smiled at him. “Not really, Richard. It’s such a nice name, Blade. It makes me think of that sword lying on the tomb in the church. But John is nicer, so simple, and much easier to say.”

“What are you waiting for, Kate?” Sir Richard asked suddenly and sharply.

Then they were all looking at Kate, smiling, kindly but remote and even cold. They had dismissed her, she knew, and she felt a wall rise between herself and them.

“Maybe I am mistaken in all of you,” she said slowly. “Perhaps I don’t know any of you. … I … I’ve only made a fool of myself … trying to do too much … thinking I was helping. I’ve insulted the American—and he’s the only one who’s been kind, after all.” She heard someone give a sob and realized it was herself and she ran out of the room.

Halfway to her own room in the east wing, tears blinding her as she went, she felt herself suddenly caught in two strong arms.

“Whither so fast?” John Blayne demanded gaily.

“Oh—” She stopped and pulled away. “Please! I was going to find you as soon as I—I must tell you—I was quite wrong this morning.” She was mopping at her eyes with the ruffled edge of her apron. “I overstepped myself. I had no right—being only the maid, to … to … to give orders as though I were …”

“Come here.” He led her into an alcove where there was a stone seat under a high arched window. “Sit down.”

He drew her down and handed her his large clean handkerchief. “Isn’t this what the hero is always supposed to do? Provide a nice clean linen handkerchief to wipe the heroine’s tears away? On second thought, I believe he’s supposed to do the wiping. Kindly allow me—Ah, Kate, you take yourself so seriously, my child!”

What eyelashes she had, long and curling and black—no nonsense here about false ones and mascara and all that! He folded the handkerchief and put it in his pocket again.

“Now that’s better, isn’t it?”

She shook her head and bit her lip.

He looked grave. “Kate, listen to me. You keep reminding me that you are only the maid. You don’t want me to forget it. You won’t let me. Why?”

“Because”—she was very nearly crying again—“that’s what I—am!”

He reached for her hand and held it on his open palm and looked at it, a small hand, plump like a child’s hand, but strong. “It doesn’t matter how many times you tell me,” he said slowly. “It doesn’t mean a thing to me, Kate. I’m an American. We don’t classify people. You can live anywhere, be anybody, if you want to—if you are not too stubborn. That’s a stubborn little thumb—it bends back too far.”

He flexed her thumb. “I’m stubborn, too. See my thumb? I’m more stubborn than you—been at it longer so you may as well give up. You can’t change me. And I’m not going to take the castle away from you if you don’t want me to have it. I’ll go away and everything will be as it was before, as it always has been, always will be—and you’ll be happy again.”

“No,” she said in a low voice. “I won’t be happy again.”

He folded his hand over her hand. “Your hand’s trembling, trembling like a frightened bird. … Kate, tell me who you are. There’s some secret here in the castle—I feel it. It’s not about ghosts, either. It’s about someone who’s alive. … Let me help you.”

“No secret.” She shook her head.

“You don’t want to tell me?”

“Only that I’ve been wrong—about you.”

“But you don’t know me.”

“I’ve been mistaken about you. I mean—I thought you were—”

“What?”

He was gazing deep into her eyes and she could not look away. She tried to smile and felt herself blush and her heart beat. His face was near, very near—his lips—

“Kate!”

It was Wells. He stood there before them, his jaw hanging, his eyes stern. She snatched her hand away.

“Get back to the pantry at once,” Wells ordered her. “The breakfast things are waiting, not to mention that this afternoon the public will be here.”

John Blayne rose. “It’s my fault. Wells. But I don’t think you need speak to her like that, in any case.”

Wells was icy. “And there’s an overseas call for you, Mr. Blayne—it’s waiting in the library—from your father again.”

“Thanks.” He paused to smile at Kate and sauntered toward the library.

Wells waited until he was out of sight, then turned to Kate. She was still sitting there in the deep window and now was looking out into the yew walk. “Don’t get yourself mixed up with this American,” he muttered. “There’s enough wrong here in the castle without you confusing everything, too. Sir Richard would he very angry.”

She did not turn her head. “It’s a confusing world. I know—I agree with you, Grandfather. And I don’t want to get—mixed up, as you call it. We’re working people—that’s all we are. They don’t really care for us. Whatever they do, it’s all above our heads. We’ll never understand them.”

“And you,” he retorted heavily, “you don’t know what you are talking about.”

He left her and she watched his gaunt old figure shuffling down the long passage until it was out of sight. He had never loved her. Who was he? Who was she? Why were they so different, and why, for that matter, did she not love him? She had never loved him even as a child. She was always quite alone … but never so alone as now … and felt herself impelled, in loneliness, to follow John Blayne to find him blindly, merely to be near him for the brief time that he would still be here in the castle.

… He was in the library, sitting behind the great oak desk, his eyes shut, his face grimacing as he held the receiver as far as possible from him, as usual. From the receiver came his father’s voice, loud and rasping.

“Do you hear me? … I want you back here in New York, next Monday. Why? For the merger, Johnny. Where have you been all this time?”

He replied reasonably but firmly. “It’s not so simple, Dad. There are complications here—I don’t understand them altogether, but—”

The voice cut across like a buzzsaw. “You won’t be here, then?”

“I won’t he there.”

“Do you know what you’re saying?” The voice took over again. “Louise’s father will be mad, and when he gets mad you know what he’s like! It makes me mad when he gets mad and between the two of us the merger will fall through again, like as not, the way it always does. What can I tell him now?”

“You don’t need to give him any explanations for what I’m doing. What’s all the opera about anyway?”

Kate tiptoed into the room. He did not see her and she stood waiting and silent.

“The opera,”
the voice emphasized each word, “is that Louise is running around with another man while you’re running around a castle. If you’re not here on Monday, you’ll lose her, sure as my name is John Preston Blayne, Senior. Son, why do you throw everything away on a pile of rock?” The voice softened slightly. “You don’t know what love is until you’ve lost it, the way I have. I remember everything I ever said to your mother that hurt her feelings. It’s not just what I said or did, either. It’s the times I could have been with her and wasn’t, the things I wish now I’d done …”

The grating voice faltered and recovered. “To hell with you,” it said distinctly, and there was the bang of the receiver.

Kate tried to escape unseen, but he strode between her and the door. “That was my father.”

“I know.”

“You’re not going before I explain?”

“About mergers?”

“No, something much more important.”

She looked at him bravely. Then she went to the desk, took up the receiver and held it out to him. “Here,” she said, “take it.”

He took it stupidly. “What for?”

“Isn’t there a cable you should send first?”

She walked out of the room, her head held high, and left him staring after her. He took a few steps in her direction, then stopped and walked slowly back to the desk. He sat down and held his head in his hands. Ten minutes passed. He reached again for the receiver, dialed, and waited. Then he sent his message, not to his father but to Louise.

He sat a moment longer, then smiled suddenly and slapped the desk with both hands. To the tune of a waltz whistled under his breath, he all but danced out of the room.