Devil May Care (4 page)

Maybe haziness wasn't the right word. He couldn't remember a damned thing that had happened after dinner, and his memories of the period before that were somewhat chaotic. They had talked about wine, he remembered that much; and then about football.

... Kate had tried to trick him--or maybe it was one of her jokes--she had a peculiar sense of humor, that woman. But he hadn't fallen for the trick.

Thinking was a strain. It was too much for his poor head. Groaning, he dragged himself out of bed and got dressed. As he shaved he remembered the rutted road leading from the estate to the highway and groaned again. His car would be absolutely filthy.

In this he was correct, but he had no time to brood about it beforehand. Kate was affable enough-- suspiciously so, if Henry had been in any condition

26 Elizabeth Peters to notice--but she kept him busy with chores and rushed him out of the house as soon as he had forced down some breakfast. She was wearing slacks and a trench coat buckled tightly around her impossibly small waist; before they went out the door she added a hat to this costume. It was a sou'wester, of a particularly virulent crimson.

Ellie hadn't dressed. She was wearing a soft, flowing robe; her curls were tumbled and her eyes were heavy. She embraced her aunt and mumbled, "Have a marvelous time, darling, and don't worry about a thing." "I'm not worried," Kate said, frowning distractedly.

"Did I tell you one of the neighbor boys is coming to look after the lawn? Oh, I did. Don't forget to keep an eye on Sapphira's gingivitis and that funny place on Duke's back. The vet knows all about it.

You will count them all at night, and make sure everybody is in? Albert chases cars--"

"I know all about the animals," Ellie said. "You've told me a dozen times. Just take care of yourself ... Henry, what's the matter?"

Henry, who had been absentmindedly scratching his midsection, flushed irritably. Ellie should know better than to draw attention to such a crude gesture.

"Nothing," he said repressively. "Good-bye, Ellie, I'll call you as often as I can. Do take care to lock the house up at night, you are careless about such things. I'm not sure I like your being here alone, in such an isolated place--"

Ellie was looking at her aunt, who avoided her eyes. Staring at the beamed ceiling, Kate was whistling under her breath. She interrupted Henry, whose tone was decidedly petulant, with a brisk "Nonsense, she's perfectly safe here. You aren't worried, are you, darling?" Ellie opened her mouth to answer, but before she could speak, Kate went on, "Because there's nothing to worry about. The dogs DEVIL-MAY-CARE 27

are all the protection she needs, they are all trained watchdogs, and brave as lions. And the ghosts are no trouble, they are very quiet types. No chains, or banging around in the night, or anything like that. Good-bye, Ellie, enjoy yourself."

And out she went, before Ellie could say more.

Henry gave her a rather formal kiss and followed.

Ellie noticed that he was scratching his stomach again.

She stood at the open door watching as Henry drove away. There was a flash of crimson as Kate pressed her face and her hat against the car window.

Ellie waved. Then the car disappeared into the trees.

The rain made a soft beating sound on the saturated ground.

It was a warm, sticky morning. Ellie stared blankly out at the rain. She didn't know whether to laugh, or swear, or cry. Laughter won, and she stood giggling feebly for some time. The expression on Henry's face when Kate told her not to worry about the ghosts ... In all fairness to Henry, she had to admit that she herself wasn't always sure when Kate was joking--what was that awful word Henry used?

"Joshing." Good God.

Deep down in the hidden recesses of emotion, she had come to a decision about Henry; but, like many drastic decisions, it did not surface for some time.

She knew only that instead of missing Henry, instead of anticipating lonely hours, she felt only an overwhelming sense of relief. The old house radiated welcome and comfort; she could almost feel it, like warm hands bracing her. Ghosts, indeed! Kate was really a little obvious at times. And yet Henry had definitely been scratching. He never scratched.

Scratching was lower class. Was it possible that Kate ... The soft silkiness of fur brushed her bare ankles, and she looked down to find herself calf-deep in cats.

The dogs had their own house, an elaborate heated

28 Elizabeth Peters kennel that resembled a Walt Disney castle--one of Kate's more revolting architectural conceptions.

They spent part of their time there and part of it in the house, to which they were admitted, on rainy days, via a system of mud rooms, drying rooms, and the like, as complex as the air locks on a space vehicle.

But the cats had not gone out and they were not about to do so. When Ellie opened the screen door the assorted eyes, green and gold and baby blue, contemplated the rain, and then turned to Ellie with critical contempt. It was obvious what they were thinking and it put Ellie on the defensive, as it was meant to do.

"I can't help it if it's raining," she said loudly. "It isn't my fault."

Nobody in the crowd believed a word of it. Under their contemptuous regard Ellie began to doubt it herself.

She fled from the cats into the kitchen, where she found Marian Beaseley clearing away the breakfast dishes. Kate's arrangements about domestic help were as peculiar as her other habits. She didn't like live-in servants; in fact, the whole master-servant relationship irritated her considerably. Yet it was impossible to run the big house single-handed. Kate had solved this dilemma in a characteristic manner and with the uncanny luck that usually accompanied her most eccentric ideas. Who else but Kate could have discovered a family that felt just as she did about privacy, and who were willing to work only for someone who ignored their presence as thoroughly as they ignored hers?

The Beaseleys, husband and wife and assorted children, did most of the work in and around the house, with the assistance of a commercial cleaning team that came several times a year, but it was rarely that one actually saw a Beaseley in action.

They functioned like the little elves that helped the DEVIL-MAY-CARE 29

kindly shoemaker, although their big-boned, harsh- featured faces were not at all elfin--sliding smoothly out of a room as one entered it, and vanishing without comment when the work was done. They didn't need to be told what to do, they simply did it. The Beaseleys refused to work for anyone else. This was understood by the other families in the neighborhood after an unfortunate encounter between Marian Beaseley and an innocent new resident, who had visited the Beaseley house in the hope of hiring a "daily."

Kate's peculiar reputation in the neighborhood hadn't been helped by this relationship. Although there had been Beaseleys in the area for two hundred years, people had a tendency to regard them as Kate's familiars, or as victims of a form of occult blackmail. Some of the more superstitious residents really did think Kate was a witch. Oddly enough, this idea increased the respect in which she was held; people were afraid of her, but they thought of her as basically benevolent--if she was not provoked. Indeed, Ellie thought, Kate's reputation was probably as much protection as the dogs.

The Beaseleys had one defect as servants--they never waited on anyone. Indeed, the idea of Marian Beaseley, hawk-nosed and leather-skinned, bending servilely over a tray of canapes was enough to boggle even Ellie's excellent imagination. If one had the inclination, it would be interesting to trace the conglomerate ethnic groups that had contributed to the Beaseley heritage. There was Indian blood there, surely; some black genes, some Scotch-Irish--heaven knew what else. They were inbred to a shocking degree, but the results were surprisingly efficient. And perhaps no one but Kate, who had her own form of pride, could have understood the fierce independence and pride that moved the Beaseleys.

Ellie had a lot of respect for it; she nodded to Marian, who replied with a grunt--a surprisingly affable

3O Elizabeth Peters response--poured herself a cup of coffee, and left the kitchen.

She headed for Kate's workroom--the one room in the house the Beaseleys never touched. It was a wonderfully comfortable room. Odd, that the word "comfort" should come to mind so often about a house as grandiose and bizarre as Kate's home; but for all its pretentiousness and elegance the house had nothing in it that had been selected for the purpose of impressing anyone. Every object was something Kate liked for its own sake.

Ellie was one of the few people who knew where the money for all this had come from, one of the few who knew of Kate's brief, unhappy marriage. She had inherited a modest fortune from her husband, but it was she who had built it into a large fortune through judicious and inspired investments. That was Kate's undeniable talent, a talent so great as to verge on genius, and the one thing that bored her to the point of nausea. As soon as she had made the money she needed, she had dropped out of the market and proceeded to spend the income doing the things she loved--and doing most of them rather badly.

Ellie grinned as she looked at the piece of embroidery on the top of the pile. Kate still hadn't really mastered the satin stitch--that deceptively simple and most difficult of all embroidery stitches. She was still trying, though. The overall effect wasn't bad.

Kate could do most things competently; it was probably because she tried to do so much that she had occasional, and often spectacular, failures. Grant had been fairly kind about Kate's failure with electrical work. She had been accused of blacking out the entire town on one occasion, although she strenuously denied this, pointing out, with some justice, that even if she had tried to she could not have produced such massive effects. And there had been a storm that night ... Old Man Fletcher, the chief prodevil-MAY-CARE 31

ponent of the witchcraft theory, insisted that Kate had called up the storm to get back at him for hunting on her property. Lightning had struck his still and reduced it to a rubble of fused copper coils.

The day passed with exquisite slowness. Ellie embroidered, played the guitar, got herself some lunch, demudded four dogs, fed twelve cats, and again denied responsibility for the rain. The cats reacted variously; some kindly overlooked her inadequacy and wanted to sit on her lap, some sat and sulked ostentatiously at her, some left for parts unknown. Ellie did a crossword puzzle and practiced throwing darts, and read, and played the piano. She got herself some supper, demudded six dogs, and counted cats--and repeated, rather shrilly, that she could not make it stop raining.

The phone had rung several times; enjoying her solitude, she had not answered it. Kate had a recording device attached to the phone, although she usually wiped the messages without listening to them.

After supper Ellie watched television for a while, finished the crossword puzzle, and then decided to go to bed. The sound of the rain made her sleepy.

She checked the doors downstairs before she went up, although she was not at all nervous. The dogs were a security factor, though not in the way Kate claimed; they were all idiotically friendly, and most of them were arrant cowards. Ellie assumed that they would make enough noise welcoming a burglar to awaken her, and that if she were in any danger of sleeping through the welcome, she would certainly wake up when William, the Saint Bernard, tried to climb into bed with her. The last time she had visited Kate, William had encountered a large clicking beetle in the hall, and had fled to Ellie's bed, trembling with terror.

Normally the dogs didn't sleep upstairs, so Ellie was accompanied by only half a dozen cats when she started up. She was accustomed to weaving around

32 Elizabeth Peters them, even when they suddenly lay down on the step under her poised foot, but the climb did require a little concentration; she was gazing at the floor and thinking of nothing in particular except falling--

certainly not of Kate's final words--when a slight change in the light above made her look up.

She was almost at the top of the stairs. To left and right the long upper hail of the west wing stretched out. She had a clear unobstructed view of a considerable section of bare wall. Only it wasn't bare. Not exactly.

The man was young, and not really handsome; but he was a pleasant-looking person, with an attractive smile. His hair fell in long, wavy locks to his shoulders.

He wore a brown coat with lace at his throat, knee breeches, and white stockings; and, at knee level, a low table with a vase of flowers on it. The table was the one that normally stood in that part of the hall. The man was, in a word, transparent.

As Ellie stood transfixed he went out--disappeared, vanished--like a light when a lamp is switched off.

CHAPTER THREE.

Ellie was aroused from her stupor by a feline wail.

She was standing on someone's tail. She lifted her foot, but remained where she was, uncertain whether to retreat or make a dash for the presumed safety of her bedroom. In order to reach that shelter she would have to pass the spot where the man had ... "stood" hardly seemed an appropriate word.

Strangely enough, her uncertainty was not tempered by fear. A certain degree of disquiet was present; the occurrence had been unequivocally abnormal. But the apparition had brought with it none of the customary characteristics of visitors from Beyond the Grave--no blast of icy air, no sensation of indescribable terror. He had seemed a rather pleasant ghost. Had he smiled at her, just before he vanished? Ellie wasn't sure. She rather thought he had.

She went on up the stairs. Stopping by the table, she extended a tentative hand and touched the wall above it. It was a smooth, flat wall, painted pale blue.

It felt cool and slightly damp.

Ellie walked along the hall to her room. It was the one she always used when she visited Kate, and it was still furnished in the style she had selected when she was twelve. Early French boudoir, Kate called

34 Elizabeth Peters it. Ruffled skirts on the dressing table, giit cupids holding up trails of muslin that framed the mirror; a ruffled canopy over the four-poster bed, a ruffled skirt on the overstuffed chair ... There were rosebuds all over everything. Kate had "done" the room, as she did everything, with a thoroughness that bordered on excess, but tonight Ellie found its overwhelming cuteness comforting, a reminder of childhood and the welcome this house and its owner had always extended to her. The fire in the fireplace --a sign of the presence of one Beaseley or another, earlier in the evening--was flickering low; it added the final touch of cozy security to the walled- in brightness of the room.