Vintage Love (23 page)

“No,” he assured her. “I’ll arrange for our sailing, and tonight we shall visit the cemetery.”

Betsy rested for the balance of the day. The innkeeper’s wife did a fine job on all their clothing. It was returned to them in the early evening dried and pressed. Even Kingston was satisfied that no harm had come to his precious suit.

They waited until close to midnight. Then the three set out silently from the inn. Fortunately the cemetery was within walking distance. During the afternoon Kingston had located a strong crowbar which Eric deemed essential for the night’s work.

Swiftly making their way through the dark and deserted streets, they reached the ancient church and the small graveyard behind it. The uneven ground and the tombstones were bathed in eerie blue moonlight as they went through the cemetery gate in single file.

Betsy had no liking for these places of the dead. The slanted tombstones, worn and crumbling with age, stood sentry duty over thin mounds which marked the last resting places of so many. Scattered among these simple stones were some more pretentious memorials. In several cases there were large tombs with iron doors, unlocked only when a new coffin was admitted to the tomb.

The LaFlenche tomb was the largest of the group. Eric held a lantern in his hand and went down the several stone steps to examine the padlock on the rusted door.

Glancing up, he told Kingston, “Give me the crowbar!”

“You going in there?” the actor asked nervously as he passed the bar down.

Eric said grimly, “How else am I to know if LaFlenche is buried here?”

“Won’t be very pleasant if he is. Bodies can’t last long in this heat,” Kingston worried.

“Please!” Betsy begged him to be quiet.

Eric deftly used the crowbar to break open the padlock. It was evident that he was skilled in the technique and had used it before. This done, he pulled the iron door open. Now he glanced up at them again.

He said, “I want you to stand guard duty, Kingston. Keep your pistol at the ready and watch from a place where you won’t be seen!”

“Righto!” Kingston said, taking out his pistol. “What do you say if I post myself beyond that other tomb over there?”

“All right,” Eric said. “Just mind you’re not seen. And if anyone comes up on us, give us some sort of signal.”

“I’ll cry out!” Kingston suggested.

Eric nodded. “It will give away your hiding place, but there’s no other choice.” He turned to Betsy. “I want you to keep watch by the doorway. Also have your pistol ready.”

“I will,” she said.

He sighed and with a resigned look said, “Now I’ll take on the role of grave robber.”

A night bird flew overhead, uttering a weird cry. The eerie atmosphere of the deserted graveyard upset Betsy. She stood nervously inside the iron door, just a step within the tomb. Eric had gone on to the rear, and Kingston had taken up his stand behind the nearby tomb.

Eric spoke to her, “Pretty dusty back here. Hard to sort out the caskets.”

She turned and saw by the dim glow of the lantern that both walls of the giant, partly underground tomb had shelves. And on these shelves were set out the dust-covered coffins.

She said, “Surely you can recognize the latest addition.”

“It has been here so long that it’s as dusty as all the others,” he replied. “I’ll have to find the brass plate. The coffins are all identified with brass plates.”

“Hurry!” she said, shuddering.

He glanced at her. “Frightened?”

“Terrified!”

“We were in a worse fix this morning,” he reminded her. “We could have ended up as dead as anyone in here!”

“Don’t mention it!” she begged him.

Eric moved about a little, examining the coffins on several of the shelves. All at once he let out a small cry of triumph. “I’ve found it!” he said in a low voice.

“Good!”

“Now we’ll get it over with,” Eric said between gritted teeth as he pried at the lid of the coffin.

She heard the sound of splintering wood and turned anxiously to ask him, “Well?”

He was holding the lantern. His face wore a strange look. “Come and see!”

“I might faint!” she protested.

“I’ll take that chance.”

Slowly she made her way deeper in the tomb until she came to the coffin which had been broken open by Eric. She stood back, not wishing to peer in it. She said, “What is the answer?”

“Look!” He took her by the arm and forced her close to the coffin.

Bracing herself, she looked inside and to her utter surprise saw that it was filled with large rocks — weighted down with rocks!

“No body!” she gasped.

“Not a sign of one,” he said wryly. “Somewhere along the way the corpse was lost. And I’d say we know where and how.”

Betsy said, “Now there can no longer be any doubt.”

“None,” he agreed. “We’d better get away from here as quickly as we can. Our work is done!”

“For which I’m grateful,” she said. She placed her pistol in the pocket of her dress since she would no longer need to stand guard.

“We’ll close the iron door by using the crowbar as an emergency lock,” Eric said. “Just shove it through the iron brackets.”

They emerged from the tomb with Eric still carrying the lantern and crowbar. But just as they stepped outside and were going up the four stairs to ground level, they were confronted by what she at first thought was a shadowy phantom!

“Vultures!” a thin voice accused them. “Grave robbers! Vandals!”

Now she saw that it was none other than a cloaked Mademoiselle LaFlenche, and she was standing covering them with a menacing-looking revolver.

“It’s no use, mademoiselle,” Eric said, “Your father is not down there! His coffin is empty except for some stones!”

“Liars!” the woman said hysterically, waving the gun from one to the other. “You have stolen him from his grave, and so I shall kill you for the desecration!”

“No!” Betsy pleaded.

The woman made no reply as she fixed the gun on her in terrifying fashion. It was then that Kingston leaped out from his hiding place and grabbed hold of the hysterical woman. He wrested the revolver from her hand, and it went off in the air with a loud report as he did so. Then he clamped his arms around the still struggling spinster.

“What will we do with her?” he shouted.

Eric lifted his voice to be heard above Mademoiselle’s continual screaming, saying, “Bring her down here since she’s so anxious to join the dead!”

“She’s yours!” Kingston called out and shoved the woman down the steps to the entrance of the tomb.

“Foreigners! Murderers!” the thin woman screamed on.

Betsy quickly moved up the stairs and away from her as Eric manipulated the spinster’s spare form through the entrance to the tomb and then shut the iron door on her and put the crowbar through the brackets to hold it in place.

He then hurried up to join Betsy and Kingston, saying, “She’ll not be heard so well down there!”

“We can’t just leave here there!” Betsy worried.

“She’d die!” Kingston agreed.

“I’ll fix it,” he said. “I’ll leave a note with our innkeeper. After she’s shouted herself hoarse and flailed the skin from her knuckles, she’ll quiet down. In the meanwhile the innkeeper will find my note and she’ll be rescued.”

“What about us?” Kingston wanted to know.

Eric said, “We shall be on a vessel bound for Naples.”

In the tomb below the spinster screamed for aid and rattled the iron door. The three of them ran out of the cemetery in single file again. They did not halt until they were a distance from the place.

Betsy was short of breath from running as were the others. As they paused, she asked, “What now?”

Eric said, “We’ll go straight to the inn, pack our things, and leave.”

“Our ship to Naples doesn’t sail until the morning,” the actor reminded him.

“But we can board her tonight. Safer under cover of darkness! And by the time Mademoiselle is free, we’ll be far at sea!”

“You won’t forget to leave word about Mademoiselle with the innkeeper,” she said. “I would not want to see her come to harm.”

“Never fear,” he said.

They made their way back to the inn and hastily packed. Eric figured out the amount due the innkeeper and wrote a brief note. He left both money and the note in the private office of the inn’s owner, on his desk where neither money nor message could be missed. Then they stole silently out into the darkness again.”

There was no choice but to walk to the docks. Both Eric and Kingston took turns at helping her with her bags. She did not want this, but they insisted. When they reached the docks, they had to locate a man with a rowboat to take them out to their ship which was anchored out in the harbor. They found one doing a good business taking drunken sailors to their vessels and hired him.

The voyage to Naples was pleasant and short. It gave Betsy a chance to rest a little and forget some of the more unpleasant things which had happened in Marseilles. At least they were now on the trail of the elusive Valmy and his hostage, Napoleon. The vessel reached Naples in the afternoon, and she stood on deck to admire the beautiful setting of the ancient Italian city.

They had gone by the island of Capri which looked for all the world like a great sunbathed giant ship on the horizon. There was Sorrento and high up on the mountainside Ravello. This area of rich green, azure blue, and stark whites was another deceptively calm spot. Politically it had known much turbulence.

Eric reminded her of this as he stood on the deck at her side, studying the busy harbor. He said, “This was once the capital of Napoleon’s Kingdom of Naples. His sister Caroline and his brother Joseph held the throne here in turn.”

She said, “Caroline was not his favorite. He spoke of her bitterly more than once.”

“He felt that she had deceived him and was in many ways his enemy. Like many others Napoleon found his family hostile to him.”

“And according to Felix Black he is now here in hiding?” she said.

“That is the last word I had,” Eric agreed. “There ought to be a message or a messenger awaiting us in Naples.”

The hotel they had selected was more like a grand old castle than a public lodging place. The rooms were large and well furnished, and the restaurant and lobby had the elegance of a castle. Further it had the advantage of being only a short walk from the busiest part of the city.

She’d barely unpacked when Eric came to her room and told her, “I have to go out and try and make contact with another of our agents. Kingston will remain in the hotel to keep you company.”

“I should be all right on my own,” she said.

“Don’t be too sure,” he warned her. “The game becomes more dangerous as we near our quarry.”

She gave him an earnest look. “You do believe that Napoleon is here?”

“Yes,” he said. “That means that Valmy’s agents will be all over the place.”

“Be careful!” she told him.

He smiled and kissed her. “I think I can take care of myself. I worry mostly about you.”

“I’ll be all right,” she said.

Eric left and she went out on the balcony of her room for a while. Then she became restless. The shopping district was nearby, and she had a few things she wished to purchase. So she left her room and went downstairs to find Kingston seated in the lobby reading a tattered copy of the London
Times.

The veteran actor rose at once. “I’ve been catching up with the news from London,” he said. “Actually there’s nothing new in it for me. This edition was published before we left. I’ve read it all before.”

She smiled, “At least it will bring back facts you knew.”

“Covent Garden is having a fine season,” the actor said. “The manager here tells me they have many English guests, but I have not encountered any yet.”

“It is not the high season,” she suggested. “I propose to go out on a shopping expedition to the streets nearby. I felt I should let you know.”

Kingston showed concern. “You’re not saying you will go alone?”

“Yes. I’ll be perfectly safe. It is daylight, and the streets are filled with people. No one will try to kidnap me.”

He frowned. “I don’t think Eric would approve. Perhaps I should go along.”

“It would bore you,” she warned him. “And your presence would make me nervous.”

Kingston looked hurt. “I was not aware of having this particular effect on you.”

“I don’t mean your personality. I mean I need time to consider the items I’ll be buying, and you would quite properly become impatient. I can manage best alone.”

“If you are sure,” he said reluctantly.

“I am,” she promised. “Now do go back to reading your paper. And if Eric returns before I do, let him know where I’ve gone.”

“Try not to be long,” Kingston said with a concerned look on his pleasant face.

She left him and headed out to the narrow driveway which led down to the street. Beyond the walled area of the hotel grounds she found herself caught up in the colorful confusion of the many shops. The people were noisy and friendly and the air warm and filled with the delicious smells emanating from the many food shops scattered along the way.

She spent a long while in a small jewelry shop and then went on to an establishment which specialized in ladies’ clothing. She bought herself a needed cape with a hood attached. Then she wandered on down the street.

Unexpectedly a hand gripped her arm and a low voice directed her, “You will show no fear and come along with me!”

She turned in surprise to find that it was a well-dressed elderly man in top hat and blue jacket and brown breeches who had taken hold of her.

She asked, “Who are you and what do you want?”

“I am a friend, Miss Chapman,” the old gentleman said. He had a gray moustache, and his face was heavily lined. “I swear I mean you no harm.”

“What do you want?” she asked. “And how do you know my name?”

“I’m the messenger of a friend, Miss Chapman,” the old gentleman said. “Someone wishes to see you and has asked me to bring you to them.”

She held back as they stood on the busy sidewalk with the old man still keeping his grasp on her arm. She said, “I can scream, and someone will come to my aid!”