Devil May Care (2 page)

"Then she's joshing you. How serious is she about these things?"

"I'm not sure," Ellie said. "Sometimes she jokes about things she takes quite seriously; and somedevil-MAY-CARE 9

times she keeps a straight face when she's joking.

It's hard to tell, with Kate."

"I wonder that people bother trying," Henry grumbled.

"People love her," Ellie said. "I'm afraid I've given you the wrong impression of her. She is a little odd, but she is the kindest, most tenderhearted person alive. She is hard on people she considers pompous or snobbish ... "

Her voice trailed away and she stared fixedly at the road. Henry was glad to see that she was concentrating on her driving, but he was feeling abused.

"She sounds most peculiar," he said. "Not at all like your mother. Now there is a splendid woman!

Down to earth, competent--" "No," Ellie said. "She's quite different from Mother ... Kate said something to me once. She said she spent the first forty years of her life worrying about what other people thought. She figured half a lifetime was long enough. She is utterly honest in her peculiar way, Henry; no pretense, no living up to the Joneses. Oh, yes, I almost forgot; she's very critical of Freud just now, so don't tell her about your shrink. And don't say anything nice about monotheism."

There was a short silence.

"What?" said Henry.

"Monotheism," Ellie said patiently. "Last year she decided that monotheism has caused more trouble than it is worth, what with all the pogroms and persecution and religious wars, and things, so she--"

Henry shook his head.

"Darling, she is joshing you."

From Ellie's general direction came a soft grating sound. Henry peered under the dashboard.

"I must have the car checked. Something is grinding."

"It's not the car," Ellie said.

10 Elizabeth Peters Elite's description of his future aunt-by-marriage disconcerted Henry, but he consoled himself by enumerating her positive qualities: the estate in the Virginia horse country, the antique-jewelry collection, the stock portfolio. However, his rising spirits were dashed when Ellie turned off the highway onto an unpaved side road that deteriorated rapidly into a rutted, boggy trail lined with brambles and poison ivy. His head hit the roof of the car. He complained.

"Aunt Kate likes privacy," Ellen replied, slowing down a little.

Henry was plunged into gloom. Privacy, for the wealthy, was attained, in his experience, by walls, guards, dogs, and heavy gates. Neglected driveways meant poverty. This driveway went on for over a mile, and by the time they reached the end of it he was prepared for the worst--a tumbledown sharecropper's shack inhabited by a crazy old crone without teeth or shoes. They came out of the woods and Henry's eyes literally bulged.

A wide green lawn, smooth as clipped velvet, three or four acres in extent, was dotted with handsome old trees, including two giant, symmetrical magnolias flanking the entrance gates. Henry caught a glimpse of a formal continental garden, with clipped boxwood hedges, behind the house, before Ellie swung the car around the graveled circle and stopped.

The house was originally eighteenth century, but its red brick central core had spread out into innumerable wings. Half a million dollars, Henry thought, taking in the magnificently manicured lawns and the limitless expanse of slate roofs, chimney-crowned.

Six hundred and fifty thousand ... A broad, roofed veranda enclosed part of the west wing. It looked like a comfortable place to sit on a warm afternoon, with its wrought-iron furniture, DEVIL-MAY-CARE 11

softened by bright cushions; but at the moment it was not as impeccably neat as the other parts of the house and grounds. The furniture had been shoved into a huddle at one end. Henry revised his opinion of his hostess to fit the total image he had received thus far: old and a bit doddering, perhaps, but a delightful old lady ... By this time he would have considered Kate delightful if she had had tentacles and practiced cannibalism.

A door led onto the veranda from the house. It was closed; but as Ellie got out of the car and started toward the steps it burst open and a figure emerged, waving its arms and moving its feet with insane agility.

Its movement was so rapid that Henry could not see it clearly, but it seemed to be a child; the diminutive stature, the blowing locks of silver-gold, and the costume--jeans and flapping shirt--suggested late adolescence.

The creature was dancing. A blast of sound issuing from the open door assured Henry of the correctness of this deduction. As he watched, openmouthed, the dancer's steps took her away from the door, along the length of the veranda; and then a second figure appeared, also dancing. This was presumably a male person, although it wore a short pleated skirt that barely reached its knees, and a sport shirt of violent purple. Silvery hair, lifted by the vigor of his movements, formed a halo around his flushed face.

The music ended, with a blare like the moan of a dying cow. The male figure collapsed onto one of the porch chairs and sat panting, its neatly shod feet extended.

The female figure turned and descended the steps.

It was not a child. The hair was more silver than gold, the narrow pointed face was not free of wrinkles --or of freckles. The features were undistinguished, except for a pair of remarkable eyes, somewhat shadowed and sunken, but of a shade of azure so deep as to be almost cobalt--the true, rare

12 Elizabeth Peters sapphire-blue. Glowing like gems, they matched the woman's sapphire earrings, stones the size of lima beans, framed in small diamonds. The earrings did not match the rest of the costume--jeans, dirty white sneakers, and a man's blue work shirt.

This, no doubt about it, was Aunt Kate, Henry got out of the car, mashing his knee on the door handle in his haste. Without breaking stride Kate advanced upon him, her eyes fixed unwinkingly on his face. Henry was suddenly reminded-- although there was no physical resemblance--of a schoolteacher he had once had, an outspoken old termagant who had terrified him.

"Henry?" Kate said, extending a small ugly hand-- calloused, square-fingered, covered with a network of half-healed scratches. The questioning tone in her voice implied that she was hoping against hope the answer would be No.

"And you're Aunt Kate," Henry said heartily. "I hope you don't mind my calling you that; after all, I'm almost one of the family. And I feel I know you, Ellie has spoken so often about you--" "Lies," Kate said. "All lies."

She turned to Ellie. They did not embrace; instead they stood grinning foolishly at one another. For a moment the resemblance was uncanny, and all to Kate's advantage. Her blue eyes danced and her face looked softer and younger.

"It's been a long time," she said, and smiled even more broadly, as if the triteness of the phrase pleased her.

"You're pretty good," Ellie said. "Since when have you taken up Scottish dancing?"

"Last month. The reels are not coming too well.

Ted is in rotten shape and he won't exercise." Kate cast a critical glance at the man in the skirt. Henry still had not accustomed himself to her voice, which was too low and too deep and far too emphatic for her small frame. She couldn't be five feet tall ... DEVIL-MAY-CARE 13

"Leave the luggage for now," she ordered--most of her remarks sounded like orders, whether they were meant that way or not. "You can unpack later.

I need a drink. Ted wears me out; he's so inept." "Delightful suggestion," Henry said heartily. "You and I are going to be pals, Aunt Kate."

Kate turned and gave him a long, thoughtful look.

Ted struggled to his feet as they approached, and Kate, without stopping, threw a casual introduction over her shoulder.

"Willoughby, Eraser. You remember Ellie, Ted." "Indeed I do," said Ted. He might have traded voices with Kate, to the benefit of both. His was highpitched and drawling, with an affected stress on the vowels. He was a tall man, a little flabby around the middle, but otherwise in excellent condition for his apparent age. On closer inspection the garment that covered his lower torso seemed to be a kilt rather than a skirt, but Henry had no doubt as to Ted's nature. The way he stood, with one hand on his hip ... He nodded coolly to Ted, who nodded back at him without enthusiasm, and followed his hostess into the house.

There he found himself confronting a suit of armor that appeared to be about to topple off its pedestal on top of him. Henry stepped back and stared.

The rest of the decor went with the armor. The hall was determinedly medieval, from the flagstone floor to the oak-beamed ceiling. The furniture was scanty, but one piece caught Henry's calculating eye--a long, low chest, intricately carved. Sixteenth century, at the latest, he thought. It could not be a reproduction.

The blackened, satiny surface was the product of centuries of use. It must be worth at least ... And the tapestry over the chest looked like one he had seen in a museum somewhere, with unicorns and ladies in pointed hats enveloped in a misty green twilight.

As he followed Kate through room after room, he

14 Elizabeth Peters had the feeling that he had stumbled into a museum.

The drawing room was a pleasant relief to the eyes after the gloomy bareness of the hall; long windows let in a flood of sunlight that warmed the Aubusson carpet, the rosewood piano, and the eighteenth- century furniture.

The next room was a library. The decor here was Gothic. A massive stone fireplace occupied one entire end of the room. The other three sides were filled with books. A gallery, with more bookshelves, ran around the upper portion of the room, reached by a curving wrought-iron staircase. The high ceiling was beamed, gilded, carved, and painted to a dizzying degree.

Finally Kate opened a door at the end of a long corridor.

"My workroom."

The room was enormous--thirty by fifty feet at the least. There was another fireplace, with a white carved mantel, and a wide bay window filled with plants. Some of them were withered. The outstanding quality of the chamber was the incredible litter that filled it. The furniture consisted mainly of chairs and tables; the flat surfaces of both types were covered with objects, many of them cats.

Henry had never seen so many cats. Fat cats and lean cats. Short-haired cats and cats that looked like animated mops. Blue cats. White cats, tabby cats, gray cats. Siamese cats, Persian cats, and cats of indeterminate species. Kittens. Cats with long tails, cats with no tails at all.

Kate had left the room, presumably in search of refreshments, so Henry was able to stare unobserved, which he did. The cats weren't the only kind of clutter. A long table in the center of the room was heaped with miscellaneous objects, ranging from fabric and tangles of bright-colored wool to tools such as pliers and hammers; scraps of wood, papers (newspapers, carbon paper, sketching paper), pendevil-MAY-CARE 15

cils, scissors, an orange rind, and four coffee cups, all of them dirty. The chairs and the floor contributed musical instruments (guitar, zither, lute, and a set of trap drums), sporting equipment (a tennis racket, a baseball bat, and a jump rope), several pieces of unfinished embroidery, a quilting frame, with a quilt on it, and two plastic do-it-yourself models of monsters (Dracula and the Wolf Man). The parts of the floor that showed between cats were tiled in a creamy marble pattern. The walls were pale green, but very little of their surface was visible; pictures and posters covered them, as in an overcrowded and bizarre art gallery. The only painting that rated a clear space, above the mantel, was a Japanese water color of cherry trees in bloom. Henry's superficially educated eye recognized its quality, which made some of the other pictures even more appalling. Many framed photographs depicted cats and kittens, sickeningly maudlin in style. There were several photographs of statue heads, one of a man in a femininely draped hat, and another of a personage with a weird crown on his head and features so exaggeratedly ugly that they verged on caricature.

The posters included a map of Middle Earth, an profanely belligerent piece of propaganda for women's liberation, and, occupying the center of the longest wall, a near life-sized representation of a large gentleman in the act of throwing a football.

The face guard of his helmet obscured his features, but Henry did not need the number 9 stamped across the ample front of his jersey to identify him.

Henry sighed involuntarily and turned to meet the unexpectedly sympathetic eye of the kilted person named Ted.

"It is a bit overpowering," said Ted, with an engaging smile.

Shaken out of his usual composure, Henry spoke without affectation.

16 Elizabeth Peters

"Is she for real?" he asked.

"That's very perceptive of you," said Ted. "How much of Kate is for real? God knows. There's a germ of truth behind all her peculiarities, but ... I've often wondered myself."

"A germ of truth," Henry repeated. "Including her claim to be a witch?"

"Ah," said Ted. "Now that is the most interesting question of all."

Before Henry could decide whether or not he wanted to pursue this subject, the door opened. Kate and Ellie entered, carrying trays. Henry leaped to take Kate's from her; but as he reached out for it he was paralyzed by an outburst of sound from far down the corridor. It sounded like a pack of wolves approaching.

"Damn it," Kate said. "I forgot the dogs. Ted, get the door, quick--"

Ted was too slow again. Before he could reach the door, a furry avalanche was upon them.

The intensity of the sound was diabolical; the shouted orders of Ted and Kate mingled with the howls of angry cats and the baying of the dogs. Furry bodies flew in all directions. Henry stood frozen as an animated, fragmentary rug swirled around his feet and battered his ankles. When a huge, liver colored mastiff launched itself at his throat he closed his eyes, but stood firm.

The crash of his fall stunned him. He could feel the dog's weight on top of him; the hot, slobbering breath was only an inch from his face. Henry opened his eyes on a vista of white fangs and drooling red tongue. He closed his eyes again. The dog moistened his entire face in one long loving swipe from chin to hairline.