The Mermaid in the Basement

by Gilbert, Morris

  “Can’t I stay up awhile longer, Mum?”

  “No, you can’t. To bed now.” Serafina firmly took him to his room, helped him with his pajamas, and tucked him in. “Now then. Are you going to sleep tight?”

  “Yes, I am.Mum, do you think Dylan will come tomorrow?”

  “I think he will.”

  “Good. I like him.”

  “I’m glad you do. He’s a good man. Now good night, David.” She kissed him, and he gave her a hard hug. She turned and walked down the hall and went into her room. For some time she sat looking at the transcription of the journal and marveling at the evil that was in the actress. Sir Leo had given her the transcription and asked her to review it again before she gave her testimony tomorrow. It had been a grievous task for her. Finally the pendulum clock broke the silence; the house was quiet for the servants had all gone to bed.

  Serafina put on her nightgown and then her robe. She moved across the suite to turn off the gaslight. The door opened suddenly, and Serafina stared at the man who entered.

  “Superintendent Winters, what are you doing here?” Serafina’s expression revealed her shock.

  “I think we have some business,Viscountess.”Winters moved quickly for a big man.He reached out and put his hands around her neck. “You’re going to tell me where the woman is, the witness you and the actor found.”

  Like a flash of lightning, it all became clear to Serafina. “You’re the one who killed Kate Fairfield! You’re Secret Lover!”

  “That’s right, and I want your transcription while I’m here.”

  “I’ve already given it to Sir Leo.”

  “No, you haven’t. It’s here. Grant told me.”

  Serafina’s mind was working rapidly. His big hands were around her throat, and he was strong enough, she knew, to break her neck. “If I give you the diary and tell you where the witness is, will you go away and leave us alone?”

  “Yes, I will.”

  He released his grip, and Serafina moved over to the table. She picked up the transcript of the diary that she kept there, and turning to him, she asked, “Why did you do it,Winters?”

  “I had to. She was going to tell my wife about our affair.”

  “I read that much in the journal. She bled you white, didn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Winters said. His handsome face was set, and his eyes were unnaturally bright. “I embezzled funds from my wife’s account to pay her off, and Kate knew it. She was going to tell my wife everything. So you see, I couldn’t let her live. She was a wicked woman.”

  Serafina held out the diary, and he took it, glanced through it, and then stuck it into his pocket. “I’d like to let you live, Viscountess, but I can’t. I’ve got the transcript, but you could retranslate it. I’m sorry it has to be like this. On one condition I’ll let you live.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tell me where the witness is.”

  Instantly Serafina made up a name. “Her name’s Maude Simms. She lives in a room over The Blue Lion in the Seven Dials district.”

  A grim satisfaction swept across Winters’s face. Perspiration had appeared on his forehead, and his face was almost grey with strain. “I’m sorry. I’m not a killer, but I’m fighting for my life.” He suddenly reached forward to seize her by the neck, but Serafina twisted free. She picked up the lamp on the table and threw it at him. He ducked, but it caught him on the forehead and shattered. It cut a furrow in his face, and the blood ran down. Serafina screamed, and he lunged at her.He grabbed her by the throat, and she beat against him with her fists, but it was useless. She fought for air, and her eyes were filled with the terrible features of Winters as he slowly strangled her.

  Just then the door burst open, and a voice said, “Turn her loose, Winters!”

  Winters did not release her, but he turned. Serafina twisted in his grip and saw Dylan throw himself across the room. He threw a powerful blow that caught Winters on the side of the face.Winters’s hands relaxed and he fell to his knees. He started to get to his feet, but as he did, he pulled a revolver. “I’ll have to kill you both now,” he cried in a deadly voice.He lifted the revolver, but Serafina threw herself against him. She caught his arm, and as she did, Dylan struck him a terrible blow just where his neck joined his head. The gun fired, but the bullet went harmlessly into the ceiling. The blow drove Winters to the floor, and Dylan quickly seized the revolver. At that instant, Grant rushed into the room.He took one look at Winters and said, “We were right, Dylan.”He seized Winters by the arm and pulled him to his feet. He twisted the big man’s arms and put a pair of cuffs on him.

  “Shoot me!”Winters cried. “Shoot me, somebody!”

  “No,” Grant said coldly. “You’ll hang,Winters.”

  Dylan moved over to Serafina and put his arm around her, for she was trembling. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes. He was going to kill me.”

  They all three stared at Winters, and then Grant said, “You’re under arrest for the murder of Kate Fairfield and the attempted murder of Viscountess Serafina Trent.”

  Winters stared at them and began to tremble. “Just shoot me,” he whimpered. “I can’t bear the disgrace.”

  “You didn’t mind letting Clive Newton bear the disgrace,” Grant said, his voice hard.

  Grant led Winters out of the room, and Serafina suddenly felt herself swaying. Dylan gently said, “Sit down, Serafina.”

  As she sat down, Bertha came rushing in, along with Serafina’s parents. “What’s happened?” Septimus demanded.

  “It’s good news, Father,” Serafina said. She was rubbing her neck, which she knew would later bear a bruise. “Clive’s going to be set free. Superintendent Winters killed the actress.”

  “Superintendent Winters?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Yes.” She explained to them how it had all come about, and finally she turned and said, “If Dylan hadn’t helped, it would never have happened.”

  Septimus came over and put his hand out. “God bless you, my boy,” he said, wringing Dylan’s hand with all his strength.

  Dylan smiled. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

  “Well, I’ve been wrong about other things. I may be wrong about that too.We’ll have to talk about this, you and I.”

  “I’ll be glad to, sir.” He turned to Serafina. “Do you need a doctor, Viscountess?”

  “No, but my nerves are so on edge I don’t know if I can sleep.” And then she gave Dylan a strange look.He could not read her expression, but he saw her smile. “Some stories do have happy endings, don’t they?”

  Dylan returned the smile. “Yes, they do, Viscountess Serafina Trent, and this is one of them, indeed!”

  TWENTY-SIX

  The formal dining room was extremely comfortable. The table and sideboard were Elizabethan oak, solid and powerful. The carved chairs at each end of the table had high backs and ornate armrests.Mirrors on the wall reflected the gaslight from the magnificent chandelier. The curtains were dark green, and pictures adorned the walls.

  Matthew Grant had been silent for most of the meal, although Dora, who sat next to him, chattered amiably. The food had been completely outside of Grant’s experience. The first course, a bisque, was delicious. It was followed by salmon, and Matthew could not help but notice how much of the food was taken away. The family seemed to just sample a dish and then wait for the next. The fish was followed by an entrée of curried eggs, sweetbread, and mushrooms.

  Dora smiled at Matthew and said, “Don’t eat too much. There’s a lot more to come.”

  “I’m not used to such rich meals,Miss Dora.”

  “Well, it’s time you got used to them.” She stared at him, and there was a winsome look on her face. “What’s going to happen to Superintendent Winters?”

  “He’ll be tried and found guilty. He’s already confessed.”

  “Well, who will be the new superintendent?”

  Matthew smiled. “I will be,” he said.

&nbs
p; Dylan and Serafina, who were seated across from them, both exclaimed, “Wonderful!”

  “They couldn’t have made a better choice,” Serafina added.

  Septimus said, “Well, it is indeed an honour to have Superintendent Grant with us tonight.”

  Bertha had been prepared to cast disparaging remarks on a mere policeman, but the superintendent of Scotland Yard—that was something else again! “We’re so happy to have you here, Superintendent Grant,” she cooed.

  Grant found her amusing. “Thank you, Lady Mulvane. It’s kind of you to say so.”

  Clive was pale, but his eyes were alight with pleasure. “It will be good to have an official representation of Scotland Yard in the family. I propose a toast. Here’s to Superintendent Matthew Grant.”

  They all echoed the toast to Superintendent Grant, and then Grant said, “If I may, I’d like to propose a toast to Viscountess Serafina Trent. She’s the best detective of us all.”

  Serafina received the toast and then said, “We mustn’t forget the man who came to our rescue like a knight in shining armor, Mr. Dylan Tremayne.”

  David, who had insisted on sitting next to Dylan, interrupted by saying, “Mr. Dylan, can we go fishing tomorrow?”

  “Well, I don’t see why not.”

  David’s eyes brightened, and he looked up at Dylan with a pleading expression. “I wish you’d come and live here, Mr. Dylan. Then we could be together all the time.”

  “Well, I have a living to make, see?”

  David thought this over and then blurted out, “Well, Mum, you’ve got lots of money. You could marry Mr. Dylan, and he could stay with us all the time, couldn’t he?”

  For once Lady Serafina Trent was speechless.Grant and Clive were trying not to laugh, but their attempts were not entirely successful. Everyone at the table seemed to be trying to hide their smiles. Dylan’s face was flushed, and Serafina could not look up. Finally Dylan gave Serafina an inexplicable look, then turned to David. “Well, viscountesses don’t marry actors, my boy.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because actors aren’t acceptable husbands.”

  “But you’re nice, isn’t he, Mum?”

  “Yes, he is nice,” Clive said, his eyes laughing, some colour in his cheeks now. “Since he’s ridden to our rescue, I think it’s something you might consider, Serafina.”

  Serafina knew she was blushing, and she hated it. She arose quickly and said, “I think we can move to the drawing room for dessert.” They all got up and began to move, but Dora took Matthew by the arm and said, “I thought you were a brave man, Matthew.”

  “You think I’m not?”

  “If you were really brave, you’d do more than just come courting me.”

  Matthew stared at the young woman with whom he had fallen so completely in love. It was an unexpected thing for him, and he was much more excited over the fact that Dora Newton liked him than he was over his promotion to superintendent of Scotland Yard. “If I asked you to marry me,” he said, “people would say I was a fortune hunter.”

  “Oh, you could never be that.”

  Suddenly Matthew laughed and did a very uncharacteristic thing. “Yes, I am a fortune hunter, and you’re the fortune I’m hunting for, Dora Newton.”He leaned forward and kissed her, and then she laughed. “Aunt Bertha will go into spasms.”

  David had insisted that Dylan put him to bed, and Dylan had picked him up and carried him up the stairs, followed by Serafina.He had watched as she undressed him, put on his pajamas, and then put him into the big bed.

  “Now a story, is it?”

  “Yes, a good story, Dylan!”

  Serafina moved to the other side of the bed and sat down. She saw Dylan’s face, mobile and expressive, and watched his hands as he waved them in the air telling a fanciful story.He was making it up, she knew, and she wondered again at the imagination of this man who had come into her life with such power and such force.

  Finally Dylan finished the story, and David reached up and took him by the hand. “I still think you ought to marry Mum and be my father.”

  Dylan cast a look at Serafina and winked. “Well, maybe I’ll be like the frog prince—you remember the story I told you about him? Maybe your mother will kiss me and turn an ugly frog into a fine, handsome young prince.”

  “You’re not ugly!”

  The three of them laughed together, then Dylan said, “Good night.” He stepped back, and Serafina kissed the boy, then they left the room.

  When they were outside, she asked, “Would you like to have tea?”

  “Oh, that’s good, it would be.”

  The two of them went to the kitchen, and she moved about heating water in the kettle, and they talked while it was steeping. She turned away from him and said, “I’m sorry that David embarrassed you with all his foolish talk, but David’s wrong. I could never marry. I have terrible memories of my marriage. I’ve already told you why I’m cold. Sometimes I think my soul is frozen.”

  At once Dylan came to her. Her eyes widened as he turned her around, and his face was framed in her vision. His wide, mobile lips were smiling, and he pulled her closer and said, “But ice can melt, yes?”

  “No—not in my case.”

  Dylan pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Something swirled rashly between the two of them, and once again, as she had before, Viscountess Serafina Trent felt a wonderful warmth that began somewhere in the vicinity of her heart and touched her face. At the same time there was a feeling of deep need that yearned to be satisfied. The loneliness of her past life seemed suddenly cold and barren. Dylan’s arms were strong as he held her, his lips gentle. There was strength in this man, but a gentleness that drew her.

  He lifted his head and said,“Many waters cannot quench love.Neither can the floods drown it. It’s stronger than death, Serafina. Stronger than anything.”

  She stepped back, putting her hand on his chest, letting it rest there lightly. “I told you I’m nothing but ice.”

  “You’re wrong about that, Viscountess Serafina Trent. I don’t know what others see, but I see in you a woman of fire and imagination. You couldn’t kiss me like that if you were cold.”

  “Dylan, we could never—” She broke off.

  “We could never marry, you were going to say.”

  “We’re too different.”

  “But one of us could change.” He reached out and put his hand on the smoothness of her cheek, then smiled. “Good night, Serafina.”

  “You’ll come back?” she asked quickly and then flushed. “To—to see David, I mean.”

  “Yes, to see David, and you and I will have more talk about a great many things.” He did a strange thing then. He lifted his hand and ran it over her hair. His touch seemed to awaken something in her, and as he stood there smiling, it seemed to her that her heart beat faster. He turned and walked out of the room, and when he did, she walked to the window. She looked up at the stars spangling the heavens and whispered, “I’m not cold! Dylan said so—”

  And then Lady Serafina Trent smiled and watched until he disappeared into the darkness.

  She hugged herself and whispered, “He’ll be back tomorrow. I know he will.”

  Excerpt from

  A Conspiracy of Ravens,

  Book Two in the Lady Trent Mysteries

  October, the harbinger of winter, had fallen upon England. A cold, blustery day swept across London and the many houses that bordered the city itself. Lady Serafina Trent had come to stare out the window, and the gloom of the day dampened her spirit. As she looked at the enormous oaks, they seemed to be specters raising skeletal limbs toward the sky.

  A fleeting memory came to her as she thought of how she had come to Trentwood House as a young bride. She remembered the joy and the anticipation that had been hers when she married Charles Trent—but then a trembling, not caused by the temperature, shook her as a bitter memory touched her. She thought of her husband, now dead and buried in the family cemetery, then forced the thought a
way.

  Serafina’s eyes lingered on the grounds of Trentwood, the ancestral estate of the Trents. The grass was a leprous grey, the trees had dropped their leaves, and the death of summer took away the beauty of the world. Serafina suddenly turned, and with a quick movement moved away from the window and toward the large table where David sat scrunched up in a tall chair made especially for him. The blaze in the fireplace sent out its cheerful poppings and crackings, sending myriads of fiery sparks upward through the chimney in a magic dance, and the heat radiated throughout the room.

  Serafina took a seat beside her son. She glanced around, and once again old memories came—but this time more pleasant ones. This was the room that she had persuaded Charles to give her as a study, and it was lined with artifacts of the trade of human anatomy. A grinning skeleton wired together stood at attention across the room. She and her father had put it together when she was only thirteen, and after her marriage it had come with her to Trentwood. Charles had laughed at her, saying, “You love death rather than life, Serafina.”

  Once again, the bitter memory of her marriage to Charles Trent brought gloom. She quickly scanned the room, noting the familiar bookshelves stuffed with leather-bound books, the drawings of various parts of the human anatomy on the walls, the stuffed animals that she and her father had dissected and put back together again. A table stretching the length of one wall was covered with vials, glasses, and containers. She remembered how she had labored in the world of chemistry during her early years at Trentwood.

  “Mum, I can’t do these old fractions!”

  Serafina smiled and put her arm around David. At the age of seven, he had her looks—fair hair and dark blue eyes with just a touch of violet like Serafina’s own. He was small, but there was a hint of a tall frame to come.

  “Of course you can, David. It’s easy.”

  “No, it ain’t,”David complained, and as he turned to her, she admired the smooth planes of his face, thinking what a handsome young man he was. She also noticed that instead of figures on the sheet of paper before him, he had drawn pictures of strange animals and birds. He had a gift for drawing, she knew, but now she shook her head saying, “You haven’t been working on fractions. You’ve been drawing birds.”