The Shivering Sands (45 page)

“Gentleman Terrall,” breathed Allegra. “I wonder if he’ll come here?”

“We shall know him if he does,” put in Allegra. “If we see a man with good manners…”

“Like Mr. Wilmot,” added Alice.

“Do you think Mr. Wilmot…” began Sylvia, awestruck.

“Silly!” snorted Allegra. “This man’s only just escaped and Mr. Wilmot’s been here ages. Besides we know who Mr. Wilmot is. He’s related to a knight and a bishop.”

“Sounds like a game of chess,” said Alice. “But this Gentleman must look rather like Mr. Wilmot except that he’s older. Like Mr. Wilmot’s father then, if he has a father…which of course he has. But it’s exciting. Imagine this Gentleman prowling about looking for victims.”

“Suppose Edith was one,” suggested Allegra.

There was an immediate silence round the table.

“And,” added Sylvia, “what about that Miss…er…Brandon. Perhaps she was, too.”

“Then he must have been here…” whispered Allegra, looking over her shoulder.

“But what did he do with the bodies?” cried Alice triumphantly.

“That’s easy. He buried them.”

“Where?”

“In the copse. Don’t you remember we saw…”

I said: “This conversation is becoming too gruesome. And it’s all froth and bubble.”

“Froth and bubble,” Allegra giggled.

“It’s all grown out of a paragraph in the newspaper and you have all been talking utter nonsense.”

“I think you rather liked it, Mrs. Verlaine,” said Alice demurely, “because you didn’t try to stop us till we talked of the copse.”

Alice and Allegra were poring over a book at the schoolroom table.

I went closer and saw that it was a fashion book and that it was open at the page of young girls’ dresses.

“I like this,” cried Allegra.

“It’s too fussy.”

“You like things too plain.”

Alice smiled up at me. “We’re going to have new dresses and we’re choosing our patterns. Mamma said we might. Then we shall go up to London and pick the material. We go once a year.”

“I think I’ll have this red,” announced Allegra. “I suppose you’ll have the blue.”

I sat down with them and studied the dresses and we talked of the kind of material which would suit them best.

I met Godfrey in the graveyard by the Stacy tomb. I had never felt quite the same sense of privacy here since the gypsy woman had risen out of the grass and ever after had always had a special feeling of being overlooked in this place. In fact, since the fire I had had many uneasy moments when I was in isolated places. It was a natural reaction in view of my doubts and suspicions.

Godfrey was coming toward me. He was certainly pleasant to look at and I immediately thought of Gentleman Terrall. How absurd! That frivolous conversation of the girls had made me picture the escaped homicidal maniac as Godfrey.

He now seemed a little thoughtful.

“Hello,” I said. “Has anything happened?”

“Happened? What did you think?”

“It is just that you seem unusually pensive.”

“I’ve been down to the site. Those mosaics are very interesting…that pattern running through. I can’t make out what it is, though.”

“But just a pattern!”

“Well, one never knows. It might lead to some fresh light on the Romans.”

“I see.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed. It is interesting…really. Do go and look at it. Of course the stone is so discolored that you can’t see the pattern, but I can make out the similarity all over the pavement and in the baths.”

“I haven’t been there since…”

“No. Naturally you’d feel reluctant. But I was thinking of Roma.”

“In what way?”

“Suppose she’d found something there…some glimmer of a notion and she told it to someone who wanted to develop an idea…”

“You
are
still harping on the theory of the jealous archaeologist.”

“Surely one should never discard a theory until it’s proved wrong.”

“But it wouldn’t explain Edith’s disappearance.”

“You’ve linked the two disappearances firmly in your mind. It may be you’re wrong there.”

“But the coincidence!”

“Coincidences do occur now and then.”

“I wonder if Roma ever came here…to this graveyard,” I said irrelevantly.

“Why should she? There’s nothing of archaeological interest here.”

I looked over my shoulder.

“You’re nervous today. Why?”

“I just have an uneasy feeling of being watched.”

“There’s no one here but the dead.” He took my hand and held it firmly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Caroline.” And his smile meant: There never will be while I’m there to take care of our lives. And I thought how right he was; and I saw clearly that future of which I had thought now and then: the peace, the security, which I was not sure that I wanted.

Perhaps he was not completely sure either. He would never be impulsive. He would give our friendship a chance to develop; he would never force anything. That was why when he made his decision it would be the right one…from his point of view.

I said: “I’ll go along some time and look at the motifs.”

“Yes, do.”

We came through the graveyard toward the lych-gate and as we did so Mrs. Rendall was standing there. She looked baleful like the avenging angel until she smiled sweetly at Godfrey. She ignored me.

I left them together.

I walked beside the baths and it seemed as though Roma was with me for I was seeing her so clearly. How excited she had been when she had shown me these!

I did not want to look in the direction of the burned-out cottage but I could not prevent my eyes straying there. How eerie it looked—a blackened shell like the chapel in the copse.

Roma seemed very close to me that day. I almost felt that she was trying to tell me something. Danger was very close to me. I could sense it all about me. I tried to shrug off the feeling, but I had been foolish to come here. It was too close to the scene of my terrifying experience. The place was too lonely and there were too many ghosts from the past.

Pull yourself together, I scolded myself. Don’t be so absurdly fanciful. Look at the mosaics and see if you can pick out this pattern.

The color was dingy. Centuries of grime had made it so. Dear Roma, how she had tried to give me an interest in life when Pietro had died and because she had believed that archaeology could provide the panacea for all troubles she had set me fetching and carrying for those who were piecing the mosaic together. Of course the picture on the mosaic would be part of the pattern about which Godfrey was so interested.

I felt as though Roma were applauding me. I had helped work on that mosaic. I must tell Godfrey about this at the earliest possible moment.

I went straight back to the vicarage.

I had to find some way of letting him know I was there and by good luck one of the frightened little maids was polishing the brass knocker so I did not have to knock.

“Mrs. Rendall is in the still room,” she volunteered.

“It’s all right, Jane,” I said, “I just want to go up to the schoolroom. I’ve left some music.”

I went upstairs, where Godfrey was giving a lesson in Latin. He was alert as soon as he saw me.

The girls looked at me in surprise. I knew they missed very little.

“I’ve left some music, I think,” I said, and went across the room to the drawer where I kept a book of elementary studies.

“Can I help you?” Godfrey was beside me, his back to the girls.

I fumbled with the book and taking a pencil wrote on it: “Graveyard in ten minutes.”

“Is that what you’re looking for?” asked Godfrey.

“Yes, I’m sorry to have interrupted the lesson. Only I did need this.”

I went out of the schoolroom, aware of their eyes following me. Down through the hall, quickly, lest Mrs. Rendall emerge from the still room, and out to the graveyard to wait.

In less than ten minutes Godfrey was with me.

“Perhaps I’m being over-dramatic,” I said, “but I’ve remembered something. When I came here and stayed a few days with Roma, they were piecing the mosaic together. It was too precious to move, Roma said, and she had some of her people working on it. I was supposed to be helping…doing nothing important, of course, but it was to give me an interest.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, dispelling all my doubts that what I was telling him was important.

“Well, that mosaic was a part of this pattern, I believe. In fact I’m almost sure of it.”

“We’ll have to look at it,” he said.

“Where is it?”

“If any piecing together was successful it would be in the British Museum. We must take the first opportunity of looking at it.”

“When can you go?”

“There’d be comment if I took a day off at the moment. What about you? You’ve been here some time and haven’t had a day off have you?”

“No, but…”

“I shan’t rest until one of us goes.”

“I believe Mrs. Lincroft is taking the girls to London to buy dress material some time soon.”

“There’s your opportunity. You go up with them and while they buy material you go into the Museum and see if you can find that mosaic.”

“All right,” I said. “If I get the opportunity before you do, I’ll go.”

“We’re getting somewhere,” said Godfrey, his eyes gleaming with excitement. He returned to the schoolroom and I hurried back to Lovat Stacy where I met Mrs. Lincroft in the hall. She said: “You’re later than usual.”

“Yes. I had to go back for this.” I flourished the book and it slipped from my fingers. She picked it up for me and I was aware of “Graveyard ten minutes” written on the cover. I wondered if she had seen it.

The girls were excited as we traveled up on the train.

“What a pity,” said Alice, “that Sylvia couldn’t come.”

“She would never be allowed to choose her own material,” put in Allegra.

“Poor Sylvia! I feel sorry for her,” said Mrs. Lincroft; and she sighed. I knew she was thinking of the births of Alice and Allegra—highly dramatic and unorthodox both of them; and, yet she had managed to give them a happier home than Sylvia’s conventional one. I thought of her remark about the slippery stone and I thought: That woman has done everything she can to make up for her lapse.

“Poor Mrs. Verlaine,” went on Alice. “She isn’t going to buy material for a new dress.”