Death in the Castle (2 page)

“I’m not sure of the breed!”

They had been talking as equals, a young woman and an older man, and Sir Richard enjoyed it. She knew from habit, however, exactly when to slip from the role of almost daughter to almost maid, and she did so now.

“Please, Sir Richard, how will I know the American when I see him?”

“How should I know? I’ve never seen him myself.”

Lady Mary interrupted, but mild and detached as usual. “He’ll be the only one who doesn’t look an Englishman, I daresay.”

Kate laughed again, a pleasant ready music, rippling with gaiety. “Perhaps I’ll coax him back on the train again to America! Or, if I don’t like his looks, I’ll tell him about the Duke’s bedroom and properly frighten him.”

Sir Richard put down his cup. “He should be in King John’s room. We must show him our best.”

“Too damp,” Lady Mary said. “There’s that drip in the left corner of the ceiling where the plaster fell. Years ago it was, and it still drips. I can’t think why. Wells, why don’t you know?”

“Nobody has ever known, my lady.”

“Ah well, it can’t matter now, since the castle’s to he sold, it seems—unless some one thinks of something.”

“It’s a crime, my lady—asking your pardon.” Wells said.

Sir Richard pounded his fist on the table. “Kate!”

Kate had been looking from one face to the other, her eyes questioning, her lips parted, and she gave a start at the sound of his voice. “I am gone, sir,” she breathed and was gone.

They were silent again until Wells, faltering at the buffet and clattering nervously the silver dishes, turned to them, trembling with emotion, which he knew they would not allow him to reveal.

“If that’s all, sir, I’d better be getting into the kitchen. The butcher boy will be wanting me. A small roast for tonight, my lady?”

Lady Mary nodded indifferently, and he went away. They had finished eating. Sir Richard lit his pipe and she watched him, meditating, her silvery head held a little to the left. It was she who broke the silence, her voice plaintively firm.

“We haven’t tried everything, you know, Richard—not really, I mean.”

He puffed twice. “Can you think of something? I can’t. Lucky that Webster found those letters in the files! The Blaynes are enormously wealthy. Oil, I believe, or it may be steel, but Americans are full of oil.”

“Hateful stuff! Black smoke in all their cities, I’m told. No wonder they want to hang their paintings here. Will they bring back the two they took away?”

“My dear, they’ll do whatever they like with the two paintings—they paid for them. Otherwise we’d have no bathrooms in the castle. Besides, that was so long ago.”

“Five bathrooms for twenty-seven bedrooms!”

“Better than the maids with rubber tubs and jugs of hot water, as it was when I was a lad. Gad, I’ll never forget the way those rubber tubs could sag and spill the water through the ceiling! I let it happen the morning the Prince of Wales was here and the water came through on this table. I was only seventeen and I very nearly died of shame—wouldn’t come down to breakfast and my father—”

She interrupted with gentle laughter. “Richard, really! You told me about it the first day we met—and how many times since!”

“It’s a good story, however often I tell it,” he retorted.

They heard the honking of a horn as he spoke. Together they rose and went out into the courtyard. The old Rolls Royce stood there bravely, trembling under the throbbing engine. At the wheel, all the windows down, Kate sat enthroned, her dark hair flying in short curls about her face.

“I’m off,” she cried.

Standing side by side, very straight and gallant, they nodded and waved, looking after her as she drove away.

… The darlings, she thought, as she sped through the summer green along the drive, the brave old darlings, giving up their treasure, their heritage, their home, their castle! My home, too, she reminded herself, though her claim was far different from theirs. If the American wasn’t moved at the sight of them, if he didn’t say at once that he simply couldn’t bear to put them out, if he destroyed her dream of their living on exactly as they always had, only with the paintings on the walls if the castle was to be a museum, but everything else just as it was, and she looking after it all as she did now, if he didn’t see how impossible, how cruel, any change would be, then she would—she would simply hate him, that was all. She would hate him with all her heart and she would manage somehow to spoil everything, she would indeed.

She looked back before the next rise of land should take the castle from her view; she leaned out of the window dangerously far for that last glimpse she always sought. How beautiful the castle was in the sunlight! Sir Richard and Lady Mary were still standing just where they had been when she left them. The sun was shining on their white heads and she felt a surge of love for them to whom the castle belonged and to whom she belonged, too, in a way. She saw them look up, as if at something high above them, then the rising turn of the road took them from her sight.

Lady Mary’s eyes had gone first to the window under the high overhanging roof.

“Richard, do you see something up there?”

“Where?”

“The lost window. Someone’s there—”

“How can it be lost if someone’s there?”

“It might be
they.”

“Oh, come now, my dear!”

“Ah, but you never say whether you really believe or don’t believe.”

“What is there to believe?”

“You know quite well.”

“What?”

“Richard, you’re being stupid. It’s naughty of you!”

“To tell you the truth, then—I don’t see anything at the window—I never do.”

She stamped her foot at this and stooped to a bed of the daffodils, yellow against the gray stone of the castle. He gazed down, tender-eyed, at her slight figure and the silvery hair. His headache was gone as suddenly as it had come and he felt immense relief.

“Am I being stupid, my love? Perhaps! But who knows anything these days? I’d sooner believe you than anyone else.”

She reached for his hand at that, and they walked to the great yews, clipped in the shape of elephants. There they paused in mutual gloom for the yews had been planted two hundred years ago and clipped a hundred years later by a Sedgeley who had seen service in India.

“He’ll chop down the elephants, that American,” she said.

“Nonsense. Americans aren’t savages nowadays.”

“You talk sometimes as though they were.”

“That’s because I don’t relish having them in my castle or cutting down my yews.”

They walked on to the rose garden. Impatient bees were fretting over the buds not yet ready to bloom.

She was brooding over the roses. “He won’t know about roses, I daresay. I’ve never heard of American roses.”

“Nor I. I daresay they can’t grow roses in their beastly climate.”

“Will he chew gum?”

“Spare me these clichés, my dear. He’s probably a decent sort, in which case he’ll not chew gum. At least he knows paintings.”

“Where’ll he have his meals? I shan’t be able to talk if he’s at table with us.”

“Wells can take him a tray.”

As though at the mention of his name. Wells appeared. “A man has arrived, Sir Richard, in a motorcar,” he announced in a sepulchral voice.

Sir Richard looked at him with irritation. “But the castle is closed today. It’s only Tuesday.”

“I told him so, sir,” Wells said.

“Very well—then tell him again. It doesn’t pay to have fewer than ten people on a tour through the castle. Tell him so.”

“He’s the persistent sort, sir,” Wells said doubtfully.

Sir Richard rubbed his nose. “Then tell him to come on Thursday with the rest of the public.”

“It’s an American motorcar, sir.”

Lady Mary entered the conversation with an air of solving the problem. “Ask his chauffeur who he is.”

“He’s driving himself, my lady.”

“Ah, well then,” she said decisively. “He’s a tourist or he’s selling something. If the former, tell him he can’t see the castle today and we make no exceptions. If the latter, tell him to apply at the service door and then meet him there and send him away.”

“Yes, my lady.” Wells bowed slightly and left them.

They watched him sadly. “One of these days,” Sir Richard began—

She cut him off. “Don’t say it, Richard. I can’t think what we’ll do without Wells. He’s like the castle. I’ve thought of things, of coarse, finding a husband for Kate, for example—someone who could help Wells, you know, until—and perhaps be a sort of chef man while—”

She was surprised at Sir Richard’s look of horror.

“Impossible!”

“What do you mean, Richard?”

“A husband for Kate—someone like—
Wells?”

“I don’t see why not—”

“Kate married to a butler sort of—cook?”

“Really, Richard, she’s only a maid—a very wonderful one and so on, but—why do you look at me like that?”

“I don’t think of her as a maid—”

“Richard, you’re being very odd—”

“I’m not being odd, my dear. It’s just that I can’t bear to think of life’s being different than it’s always been for us. We’re not getting younger and it’ll be difficult, at best—”

He turned away abruptly. She went to his side and laid her cheek against his sleeve.

“Ah, Richard, don’t grieve! Do you know what I’m thinking of? The first day you kissed me—remember? In spring—a day like this—and the daffodils blooming, too. And your mother came out—”

Sir Richard put his arm about her shoulders. “By Jove, I’d forgotten! She said, ‘You did that rather nicely, my son.’ ”

“I could have wept, I was so shy!”

“And I said—”

She interrupted. “Richard, there must be something we can do to save the castle! Life’s gone on here for a thousand years—how can it stop with us? What have we done?”

“What haven’t we done?” he said sadly. “It’s nothing we can help. It’s the end of an age, my love, and we end with it, that’s all. Someone has to, I suppose—someone had to even when Rome fell. Our castle is built on Roman ruins, you know. There’s no alternative now, I’m afraid—”

“Are you sure Webster has done all he can?”

“He showed me the letters he’d had—two possibilities, that’s all. Government would buy the castle for a prison, that’s bad enough but the other is worse—the atomic people want to pull it down and build a plant here. They need a bit of a desert, and our five thousand acres of forest and farm would do nicely.”

She shuddered and sat down on a low rock wall. “Oh no—”

He felt for his pipe and tobacco pouch, filled the pipe, lit it and drew hard. “Well, my dear, all that’s left is to keep on with the farm, and that we can’t, it seems, without selling the castle. The tenants complain about leaking roofs and no modern improvements and I don’t know where to look for the money for that sort of thing. No, the museum’s best. We’ll turn it over to the American and retire to the gatehouse. It will be comfortable enough, I daresay. And the money he gives us will pay for the farm improvements and perhaps we can make do in our time, God willing. At least the castle won’t be a prison for criminals—or be demolished.”

She pushed back her short white hair.

“I wish you wouldn’t mention God. … If we’d had a son—”

“We haven’t,” he said shortly.

“But if we had, could he—”

“My dear, why do you speak of him when he was never born or even conceived, for that matter? We settled that long ago.”

“You still think it was my fault!”

He knocked the ash out of his pipe. “Damn this thing—it won’t draw.”

She continued, her voice slightly belligerent. “You know, Richard, it was never settled that I was the one at fault. It was very unkind of you not to be willing to go and have yourself examined.”

He turned on her. “Now why do you bring that up again? It’s absurd—at our age. And I—there was no reason to think that I—besides, I suggested that we adopt a child.”

She moved away from him. “You know very well that adopted children can’t inherit. It has to be your issue.”

“Male issue,” he retorted. “It could have been an adopted daughter. Fact is”—he was working at his pipe again, cleaning it with a bit of stick he plucked from a shrub—“fact is, I’ve thought once or twice of adopting Kate.”

“Kate? Ah, that’s why you say she’s not like a maid!”

“It’s too late now, I suppose.”

“Much too late,” she said with decision.

They heard at this moment the halting clatter of the old car. Kate was coming back. The car turned into the gate at the end of the driveway and stopped.

“The damned thing has stalled,” Sir Richard said anxiously. He waited, watching while Kate stepped down from the high old vehicle. Four men followed her, all in dark suits and carrying briefcases.

“Good God,” Sir Richard muttered.

“Richard,” Lady Mary said under her breath. “I feel faint—”

“Nonsense! Keep a stiff upper lip, my dear. The American has brought his minions. But I wish Webster were here.”

He went forward, his tall lean frame erect. “Good morning, which one of you is Mr. John Blayne?”

“None of them, Sir Richard,” Kate said. The wind was blowing her curly hair about her face and she looked vexed. “He’s coming by motorcar.”

The men came forward one by one and Sir Richard felt his hand wrenched four times. Lady Mary stood behind him, her hands safely clasped. The youngest one spoke brightly, a trim fellow with sandy hair in a crew cut.

“Mr. Blayne left London right after breakfast, sir. He’s driving himself.”

“He’ll probably lose his way, which he does at the drop of a hat,” a second young man said briskly.

Sir Richard looked from one to the other. They were all alike, all clean and dapper with hair in crew cuts, all alarmingly healthy and efficient-looking.

“Mr. Blayne,” said the third quietly, “is always stopping to look at cathedrals and such. Probably he’ll get here tomorrow at the earliest.”

“Shall we get started?” the fourth asked Sir Richard.

“Started?” Sir Richard repeated.

“Yes, on the castle. That’s why we’re here. Mr. Blayne doesn’t like us to waste any time.”

They were interrupted by Wells, jogging in a trot from behind the yews and gasping for breath. “He’s lost, sir!” he cried in a thin shriek.