Daughters of Castle Deverill (51 page)

The box was large and held many documents. Celia pulled out the chair and sat down. ‘I’ll have that glass of water now,’ she said to Mr Botha, lifting out a beige file and
opening it. Mr Botha left her for a few minutes as he went to find a glass and fill a jug. When he returned the desk was strewn with paper and Celia had a smug and satisfied look on her face.
‘You’re very organized,’ she said and her voice showed her surprise. She hadn’t thought Mr Botha would have labelled and arranged the files so clearly. ‘I have found
the deeds to Mr van der Merwe’s farm,’ she said, holding up a faded pale blue file. ‘Now, I would like you to arrange for me to meet Captain Kleist.’

Once back at the hotel Celia sat in the lounge with a large glass of whiskey. After having feared being on her own she was relieved to have time to think without the overbearing presence of Mr
Botha. She sat on the sofa and rattled the ice about in her glass. The golden liquid burned her throat but landed warmly in her stomach, swiftly taking the edge off her disquiet. Celia could not
imagine her beloved father having a heart cold enough to murder, but Duchess had left little doubt. In spite of all that, the woman still claimed to love him. In spite of everything she had
learned, Celia still loved him too, although she was learning about a very different father to the one she had known. She ordered another Scotch on the rocks.

Celia slept well that night. The hotel was reassuringly comfortable. The luxury was familiar and she didn’t feel afraid. However, there was a new deadness in the depths of her being, a
dull feeling of non-emotion, which came from resignation. Resignation to the truth, to the
terrible
truth, that her father had built his fortune on the blood and incarceration of those
Dupree brothers. No amount of money could give Aurelius back those wasted years, or Tiberius. The thought was so overwhelming that her mind simply shut down. She closed her eyes and sank into
blissful oblivion.

In the morning she went down to breakfast in the dining room. There was a message for her at reception. Captain Kleist was coming to meet her at the hotel at eleven. She was surprised and a
little unnerved. She thought he would be reluctant to meet her. She imagined he wouldn’t want to talk about so murky a past. This gave her heart a little boost and ignited a spark of hope.
Surely, if he had killed on her father’s behalf, he wouldn’t be so keen to come and see her.

She waited in the lounge in an elegant floral dress, narrow-brimmed hat and cloth gloves, sipping a cup of tea. As the hands of the clock slowly approached eleven o’clock Celia began to
feel uneasy. Her stomach churned with nerves and she could feel herself sweating. The hand moved beyond the twelve and seemed to gather speed as it descended towards the six. Celia watched the
door. Every time anyone appeared she expected Captain Kleist, only to be disappointed. Her nerves grew still, the churning faded away and the sweat dried. She remained on the sofa for an hour until
she had to resign herself to the fact that the Captain wasn’t coming.

When she telephoned Mr Botha he didn’t sound at all surprised. ‘He’s old and infirm,’ he explained. ‘I suggest you give up, Mrs Mayberry. He has no wish to see
you.’

At this point many would have given up, as Mr Botha suggested. But Celia was discovering a steely determination inside herself that she had never had cause to find before. She had travelled
thousands of miles to discover whether or not Aurelius Dupree was telling the truth. She wasn’t going to return to Ireland without knowing for certain. Captain Kleist was the only one who
really knew what had happened that day in the veldt and she was adamant that she was going to talk to him, one way or the other. She remained on the sofa in the lounge for a further two hours,
trying to think of a way of tricking him into meeting her. And then, just when her stomach was beginning to tell her that it was lunchtime, she came up with a plan – a plan which did not
include Mr Botha.

She asked the concierge for the telephone number of the Rand Club and then asked if she could use the telephone on the desk to make a quick local call. The concierge was only too happy to oblige
such a pretty young woman as Mrs Mayberry and wandered a short distance away to give her some privacy. She dialled the number and waited. Her heart was beating so loudly she thought she’d
have trouble hearing the ring tone over it. There was a brief crackle down the line, then she heard it clearly. It rang a few times before a man’s voice answered.

‘The Rand Club, how may I help?’

‘Hello, good afternoon, my name is Mrs Temple,’ she said in a calm, officious voice. ‘I’m telephoning from the Governor General’s office in Cape Town. May I speak
with Captain Kleist?’

‘I’m afraid he hasn’t come in today,’ replied the man.

This was as Celia had expected. ‘Ah, then perhaps you can help me,’ she said. ‘His Majesty’s Government has a very special package to send to Captain Kleist. I think it
might be a medal. Would you be able to kindly give me his address so I may send it to him? It’s a matter of some urgency.’ The man on the other end of the telephone did not hesitate in
giving her the Captain’s address. She thanked him and put down the receiver with a rush of triumph. Flushed with her success she thanked the concierge.

Celia took a taxi to Captain Kleist’s home, which was a small, modest bungalow in a quiet suburb of Johannesburg. Armed with a bottle of gin she strode up the little path to the front
door. Taking a deep breath, she rang the bell. There was a long moment of silence before she heard the rattle of a chain and then the door opened a crack. A hard-faced old man with the narrow eyes
of a shrew stared at her through the gap. When he saw her, in her elegant hat and dress, his face registered his surprise. ‘Captain Kleist?’ she said. He nodded and frowned, looking her
up and down with suspicion. ‘I’m from the Governor General’s office. I have a package for you.’

‘What sort of package?’ he asked and his German accent was pronounced.

She looked past him to see the walls cluttered with hunting trophies mounted in rows. ‘I hear you’re a crack shot,’ she said. ‘May I come in?’ Then without waiting
for his reply, she pushed past him.

Kleist swung round, his face red with indignation, and Celia saw that he was holding a gun. ‘You know, once I would have shot someone for doing that,’ he said.

‘But you wouldn’t shoot Digby Deverill’s daughter, now would you?’ He stared at her in shock, lost for words. ‘Shall we have a drink?’

‘A drink? I’m out of drink.’

‘Lucky then I brought a bottle with me.’ She held out the gin.

He took it and looked at the label. Satisfied, he walked into the small sitting room. ‘How do you like yours, Fräulein?’ he asked.

‘With ice and water,’ she replied.

He handed her a glass of gin with a shaky hand and she followed him into the room, which was decorated with animal skins and animal heads. The air was stale with the smell of old cigarette
smoke, which clung to the upholstery. She sat down and tried not to look at all the dead eyes on the wall staring at her miserably.

Kleist was unshaven and perspiring with stains on his tie and on one lapel of his crumpled linen jacket. He did not look like he was going to remember much. He handed her a glass of gin, ran his
rheumy blue eyes over her features and grinned crookedly. ‘You are the image of your father,’ he said, his German accent cutting sharply into his consonants. ‘You remind me of him
when he was a young man. You have the same eyes.’

‘Everyone says that,’ she replied coolly, not sure whether or not it was a compliment. Did they see a sliver of ice there that had been in her father’s too?

Relieved that he remembered something, Celia asked him to share his memories, which he did much like the others had, with admiration. She listened as he told banal anecdotes of Digby’s
daring and his cunning and his unfailing luck, digressing all the time to talk about himself. Every story about her father seemed to lead into one about him. She sat back and sipped her gin while
he boasted of the Franco-Prussian War and his courage in killing ‘natives’. Indeed, he bragged, he had been awarded a medal for valour.

Celia began to tire of his long-winded tales, which might well have been total fantasy for all she knew. She didn’t believe he was going to help her either confirm or deny what Duchess had
told her. Was he likely to admit murdering a white person to a woman he has only just met? ‘Captain Kleist,’ she said. ‘Do you remember two brothers named Dupree?’

Der Kapitän nodded thoughtfully. ‘Of course I do. One of them, I don’t remember which, got eaten by a lion.’

‘Yes, he did. Is it true that you arranged the hunting trip?’

‘What if I did? Possibly?’ He shrugged and put his empty glass on the table in front of him. His hand was not so tremulous now.

‘I think you remember that day, Captain Kleist. I think you remember it well. After all, how many times have clients of yours been eaten by lions?’ She watched him with an unwavering
gaze. ‘I imagine you made a lot of money that day. More than the usual rate.’

‘White hunters are paid a lot,’ he said, then his face seemed to narrow with cunning and one side of his mouth extended into a grin. ‘But, it is true, I never made as much as I
made that day, and I earned every penny. Your father was a very demanding client.’ He nodded pensively. ‘And the others, Mad McManus, Stone Heart and Spleen, were all working for your
father too. We all earned well that day. But Deverill was a very rich man and rich men get what they want.’

‘You were hunting a man-eating lion, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, we were.’

‘But you didn’t get him, did you?’ said Celia.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No, we didn’t.’

‘But you
did
get the kill my father
wanted
you to get, didn’t you?’ she said with care, looking at him steadily.

Captain Kleist sobered up in a moment. He returned her stare with one of equal steadiness. The stale air in that room turned as still and silent as a tomb. The Captain’s face was bereft of
humanity, as flat and sharp as a stone cliff. A small smile crept across it – the smile of a man too vain to conceal his triumphs. ‘Let’s just say, Miss Deverill, that I never
missed my target.’

A few days later Celia was driven to van der Merwe’s farm in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, a five-hour drive from Johannesburg. In the group accompanying her was
a young bespectacled geologist called Mr Gerber, a Mr Scholtz and a Mr Daniels – two prospectors whom Mr Botha insisted were vital to the project – and Mr Botha himself who was now
taking credit for having suggested to Celia she assess her father’s farm. ‘It was on my mind to approach Sir Digby about it just before he died,’ he claimed. ‘It is very
fortunate that you, Mrs Mayberry, chose to come to South Africa when you did. I believe the time is right to dig.’ Celia didn’t bother to argue with him. If they found gold she
wouldn’t care who had suggested it.

The farm was a small huddle of trees in the middle of a vast expanse of arid yellow veldt, with a tall water tower, a dilapidated whitewashed dwelling in the Cape Dutch style with its
distinctive gable and dark green shutters, surrounded by rundown wooden fences and redundant farming equipment lying abandoned on the grass like the bones of beasts long dead. To the west of the
house was a field whose red earth had been recently ploughed. Beyond the house were miles and miles of flat land reaching as far as the eye could see, punctuated every now and then by clusters of
trees and herds of game.

A couple of scrawny goats eyed them warily as they pulled up in their cars and climbed out. Celia was happy to stretch her legs and inhale the rich country air. As they approached the front door
an elderly lady walked out to greet them followed by a pack of mongrel dogs. She was small in stature with dove-grey hair swept up into a bun pinned roughly to the top of her head and wrinkled skin
browned and weathered by the harsh African summers. However, her small eyes shone brightly like two sapphires, and they settled directly on Celia. She held out her hand and smiled. ‘My name
is Boobie van der Merwe,’ she said. ‘I am Flippy’s wife, but sadly Flippy is no longer with us. I remember your father. But it was many years ago that he bought this farm.
Welcome.’ She invited them all to freshen up in the house and then to take refreshments on the terrace. Then, while the men went off to look at the land Celia remained with Boobie in a large
wicker chair that looked directly out over the veldt.

‘This is a very beautiful place to live,’ said Celia, feeling the pull of the distant horizon tugging at her chest.

‘Oh, it is,’ Boobie agreed with a smile. ‘I’ve lived here for seventy years.’

Celia frowned. ‘Seventy?’

‘My dear, I’m ninety-six.’

‘And you still farm?’

‘A farmer never retires, you know. Farming is not an occupation but a way of life. Flippy died twelve years ago and I continued to farm the land with our two sons. We often wondered if
your father would ever return to mine it. They’re digging deep round here now. Modern technology is a wonderful thing. Perhaps Sir Digby forgot about it.’
Or perhaps he had darker
reasons why he never came back,
Celia thought to herself. ‘He certainly forgot to raise our rent,’ Boobie continued, her tiny eyes twinkling. ‘Or he
chose
to forget.
He must have been a good man.’

‘If they mine here, Mrs van der Merwe, you have my word that you will be very well looked after. I will see that you are relocated and compensated for the loss of your home.’

‘You don’t have to do that, my dear. We are only tenants. There is nothing to prevent you from asking us to leave, perhaps a month or two’s notice. That is all. We expected to
leave forty years ago.’ She chuckled.

‘But I know what it feels like to be emotionally attached to a place. Your heart is here, Mrs van der Merwe. It will be a terrible wrench to have to leave it.’

‘Nothing lasts forever, Mrs Mayberry. Everything is reduced to dust in the end. As long as I can look out over the veldt I will be happy. My boys will look after me.’