Touch Not The Cat (32 page)

"Rob Granger?" said Emory, then, drawling a little: "Well, well, well." Silence for two blood-beats, while the eyes of both cousins took me in from head to foot. Hair loose to my shoulders, the hairbrush still in my hand; slippers, the scent of the bath; my housecoat wrapping me to the ankles, but parting to show the nightdress underneath.

I crossed to the fireplace, sat down in one of the armchairs, and regarded them both calmly.

"Yes, Rob Granger. So now, if you don't mind, I'd rather you went. He'll be coming soon, and it would be embarrassing for everyone if you were still here."

James came slowly forward. He was looking sick. It came to me with surprise that perhaps he had really cared; the scene in the garden the other night had not just been part of the twins' play for the breaking of the trust.

"I'm sorry, James." I said it gently. "What can I say? Only that it took me as much by surprise as anyone. And it's for real. I know now that nothing else was. . . . You know how I felt about you when we were in our teens; well, it just didn't work out. I don't know why. It's the way things go. It turns out it was Rob, all along, but I hardly realized it till today. You might say it was just one of those things; you don't see them coming, but then they come out of nowhere like the Severn Bore, and everything gets swept away in the flood."

A sound from Emory, a muffled exclamation that sounded almost like a laugh. Then he said, impatiently: "Look, Bryony, what the hell's it matter if you're sleeping with Rob Granger? Leave it, Twin.

Can't you see it makes it a whole lot easier?"

"Makes what easier?" I demanded. "And I'm not sleeping with Rob Granger, not in the sense you mean. I married him this morning. Now do you see why I forgot Cathy's party, and why I want to get rid of you both?"

It was a bombshell, of course, and I hadn't meant to drop it quite like this. But even so, it didn't explode in quite the way I had expected. Emory moved forward, and the two of them stood, one to either side of my chair, staring down at me.

Though I was used to the resemblance, had played with them both since childhood, it was somehow uncanny, the two faces, so very alike, looking at me with the same still, rigid expressions.

But there were differences. James was as white as paper now, with that curiously sick look, as if something in his mind was cringing from reality. Emory wore a look I was unfamiliar with: a pale, hard expression, the grey eyes narrowed, with the lower lids lifted and the eyes themselves quite expressionless.

I said, steadily: "Yes, we're married. It really did happen just out of the blue. I'll tell you about it some other time, but we just found out quite suddenly how much we meant to one another. So there it is.

. . . And here we are." I turned a palm upwards in my lap. It was a sort of gesture of relegation; an

"over to you."

The pause seemed to last for ever, then they both spoke at once. As Emory began, quickly: "So he'll be over here soon? How soon?" James found his voice. He seemed to speak with difficulty. "So you're going to stay at Ashley? Here?"

"This is a much nicer cottage," said Emory, "than the one he has in the farmyard."

I suppose I must have gaped up at the pair of them. The conversation seemed to be taking a turn towards sheer irrelevance. Or so one might have thought, if it had not been for those cool Ashley eyes meeting on me like searchlights concentrated on a target, and the impression I got of those quick Ashley brains reappraising some situation I hadn't yet grasped.

"No," I said, rather sharply, "not here. I've some other news for you. I'd have told you tomorrow, in any case. We plan to emigrate. Rob's been thinking of it for ages, and we spoke to Mr. Emerson today about it. I want to go, too. It's the best thing, you must see that." I looked at James, and tried a smile. "I told you before that all I wanted was time to let the future show itself, and now it has.

So surely that's your problem solved, too?"

James didn't answer. Above my head the concentration had shifted. I looked up at Emory.

They were consulting one another in silence across me, as if I wasn't there. It is always irritating to be ignored; this was more, it was curiously disturbing. So was Emory's next remark.

"You can stop worrying, then, Twin."

I raised my brows. "Doesn't it concern both of you? I meant that I am now prepared to break the trust. I told Mr. Emerson so today."

No answer. My over-sensitive mental antennae picked up some powerful and urgent message that couldn't be spoken. James's eyes were still fast on his brother. Emory nodded to him, then smiled down at me.

"You must forgive us for seeming so eager to lose you, but you know the situation. Of course that's wonderful news about the trust. So, since it's working out so well for everyone, it seems we can offer you our congratulations. And the bridegroom, too, of course."

Plain, ordinary words, kindly, even; but there was no kindness in his voice, only briskness, with a burnish of flippancy, that left nothing to respond to.

James saved me the need. He was pursuing something of his own, still with that disturbing urgency.

"Then you'll sell the cottage strip?"

"Well, yes," I said slowly. "I hadn't thought about it yet, but why not? This is one bet I don't feel like hedging. We shan't come back."

James's face went slack with relief, and I saw colour come creeping back. I had some reappraisal to do there, myself, it seemed. Not only did he urgently want the property; he was eager to see me go.

Emory pegged it home, saying, swiftly, and with an easiness that seemed worked for: "What splendid news. It really is reprieve, Twin."

"Reprieve?" I queried.

Emory moved away from me, to perch on the edge of the table. He seemed relaxed now, and totally at ease. "I think you should be told, cousin dear, that it really was becoming more than ever urgent that we should be able to sell the Court, and sell it quickly. We've got a big speculator interested now, but he won't look at the property without access to Penny's Flats. And we are being hurried. Our dear stepmother's father finds himself suddenly in need of funds, so he proposes to transfer back to Spain some of the capital he put into the Bristol business. Something to do with marriage trusts for the two other daughters; dowries, they call it still. Quaint, don't you think?"

"I see. And it's tied up, is that it?"

"You could put it that way if you like." Emory sounded amused. "It so happens that it's in use elsewhere. We've been repaying the interest so far in installments, but now they want the principal back. . . . And I'm afraid it isn't there."

The reappraisal was easy after all. "You mean you stole it," I said.

"You have such a way of putting things," said Emory.

Another silence. Then I got to my feet. "Well, there doesn't seem to be much more to say, does there? My husband and I"—the phrase was like a shield—"will see Mr. Emerson again as soon as we can, and let him get on with breaking the trust and transferring the cottage strip to you." I took a breath, trying to control my voice, but it came out edged. "I hope he'll be able to get its worth out of you, and in cash, because Rob and I are going to need it. But for the present the cottage is still ours, and I should like the keys back, please, and then I'd like you both to go."

Without a word Emory drew the keys from his pocket and dropped them on the table. They fell with a little jingle. He slid lazily from the table's edge and straightened up, still smiling. James cleared his throat again, but said nothing. I suppose we must have stood there for only a few seconds, but it seemed to stretch out like a year; three strangers, parting, in a cold room.

I felt curiously numb, I suppose with shock, though I should have been prepared, after the Bad Tolz affair, for the realization that Rob had been only too right about my Ashley cousins; they were more than just self-willed and ruthless men; they were criminals. There was no need, now, to hear from Walther about the photograph. I knew for certain, as if my father himself had told me, that it had been Emory there on the Wackersberg road, and Emory who had gone (in the person of James) straight to Jerez, while James had doubled for him here at home. As before, I crushed the thought aside, in case Rob should catch its echo and react to it. All I wanted now was to be rid of the twins and their dealing, and for ever. I was conscious of a dull kind of hope that, once the arrangements were made with Mr.

Emerson, I need never see my cousins again.

But even so, when the keys fell from Emory's hand to the cottage table, the sound they made was a tiny knell to the past. Yet another knell. Ashley was gone from me, and with it, how much more.

I shook it off, and, turning abruptly, went to the door and opened it. The wind was higher than ever, tempestuous. The beech trees beyond the orchard roared and swayed against a fast-moving sky where the clouds, massing and countermassing, piling and breaking and streaming off in spindrift, left blinks and glimpses of the moonlit immensity beyond. The orchard, with its pale tents of blossom, reeled in and out of light and shadow, its torn flowers snowing down the gusts of wind. The rain had stopped.

To my relief the flying moonlight showed me the path still empty, and away beyond the roaring boughs a light still in the Court. But it showed me something else. The lawn in front of the cottage was under water as far as the lilac tree. The
level
of the Pool must have risen half a meter. And while I watched, a gust of the driving wind sent the water slapping across the flags almost to the doorstep.

"It's all right," said Emory, just behind me. "That's what we meant by 'reprieve.' We'll go across now and shut the High Sluice. So, dear cousin, lie easy in your marriage bed."

"Shut the High Sluice?" I whirled on him. I felt myself go as white as a sheet. "What do you mean?"

He took me by the shoulders. Behind me the door, caught in a gust of wind, slammed shut again. He shook me, quite gently. "I told you it's a reprieve. We haven't been quite honest with you, my dear. We didn't come all this way just to get the books. You were going to give those to us anyway, weren't you?

We came to—well, to hasten your decision to sell the cottage strip."

No misunderstanding this time. I got the whole picture straight away. "You wanted to flood the place again? You mean you opened the High Sluice deliberately, and on a night like this?"

"We could hardly choose our night. We had to take the chance, with you and the Underhills away.

The weather was just a bonus. It quickened things up a bit for James—he was the one at the Sluice. I was otherwise engaged."

"And you needn't tell me how. You made the alibis. It was your turn, wasn't it?"

The grey eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

I caught at my flying thoughts. I had been thinking about the Bad Tolz alibis, but I knew better now than to push my luck, not under those Ashley eyes. I said hoarsely: "I was thinking about Cathy."

"Oh, that. Yes, that was work wasted, but I've always been one to write off my losses. I don't bear you any grudge over that, Bryony, my dear; not the way things seem to be turning out now." A brief laugh as Cathy was dismissed. "Well, now you know the lot. We reckoned another bad flood would put paid to the cottage, and force your hand. Brutal of us, wasn't it, but needs must, they say, and the devil's certainly been driving for the last six months or more. . . . Believe me," said Emory, sounding sincere and very charming with it, "we'd have been sorry about the cottage, if you really liked it, but you should have more sense than to get sentimental about a gold mine."

The words set up an echo of some kind: James speaking with regret and genuine bitterness about the Court and the dereliction everywhere. And somewhere in the distance the sound of hammering.

"Luck all the way," said Emory. "Luck for you, too. Your being here tonight might have bitched the whole thing up, quite apart from the fact that Rob Granger usually goes home as soon as he's done his rounds at seven, or else away down to the Bull. As it is, I suppose he'll be coming along this way at any minute, and he'll be bound to notice the water level. Tell him there's no need to trouble; we'll go straight to the High Sluice now." "But—" I began, then shut my teeth on it. I wasn't going to tell them that Rob was doing his rounds now, and would certainly, darkness or no darkness, have seen the level of the water. His reaction, I knew, would be to check straight away on the sluices. He must not run into my cousins tonight on the same errand. If I could get rid of them now, I could call him in my own way, and warn him off.

"You'd better hurry, then," I said quickly. "The way the Pool's risen it looks as if the Overflow can't carry it all away. It must be coming over the bank already. For pity's sake, Emory—"

"Calm down, calm down. We can get the Low Sluice open."

"You certainly can't! It's been wedged shut again. You should never have touched it, it's been unsafe for years! Just get the High Sluice closed before there's some real damage done. . . . You'd better get going."

But as I turned to open the door for them again, the telephone rang.

Ashley, 1835

A cock crowed from the direction of the farmyard. Night's singer was silent, and day's first chorus had died to desultory pipings. A rustle from somewhere near the edge of the maze made him pause and listen, head aslant. A badger on its way home, perhaps. Or a roe. If deer had been in the garden again he must tell the keeper to take the gun out after them today.

Today . . . Today was not just another day. Today he would have to face them. His father was dead, and he was Ashley. From somewhere he must find the courage to face them with what he had done. Then, afterwards, she would be with him.

Something showed pale on the grass near the mouth of the maze. Stooping to peer, he recognized the kerchief he had given her: it was of silk, and, for fear it should be seen, she wore it always in her bosom. Wondering how she had come to drop it there, he picked it up, and, smiling, held it to his face.

The gentle fragrance of lavender brought her near again, and with her the sweet days of summer.