by Joan Smith
“Thankee kindly.” He accepted the cheroot and lit it, but ignored the offer of a chair. “Tell me, Thoreau, do you plan to stay the night? If so, I can go back to bed. Promised Mrs. Milmont I’d guard the grave, but if you’re here, there’s no point in my staying up all night too.”
“As you see, I have brought my chair and cigars, and plan to make a night of it. But don’t dash off on me. You’ve just got here, and I enjoy the company. Sophie hasn’t a word to say for herself tonight, and I was becoming quite lonesome till Jonathon dropped by.”
“Ain’t legal, you know, Captain, what you’re doing,” Mr. Blandings warned the captain.
“Surely there is no law against planting flowers on a grave?” Hillary asked, shocked. “One sees them everywhere.”
“Yes, yes, I know you fellers always stick together, but the fact is grave-digging is a crime, and stealing diamonds is a crime, and if the captain’s caught at it, it will be more woe than wonder,” Mr. Blandings pointed out.
“Tell me, Sir Hillary,” he continued, “since you’ve lost the soldier with the dogs, what plans have you made for guarding the grave? Stands to reason you won’t be sitting up here every night yourself, and I’d like to tell Mrs. Milmont what you plan, to set her mind at rest.”
“Mr. Fletcher, the solicitor, has taken the strange resolution that nothing ought to be done to guard it. The will did not provide for it, you see.”
“That’s asking for mischief,” Blandings stated.
“It is indeed,” Hillary agreed. “There is no saying who will decide to go planting flowers on her grave. We will have a regular garden on our hands, and there was no provision for a person to tend them in the will.”
Blandings considered this a moment, then puffed on his cheroot, and spoke out in a conclusive fashion. “This boils down to one of two things, don’t it?”
“Very likely,” Thoreau agreed, “but I don’t see what the two things are. Perhaps you will be kind enough to enlighten me.”
“I will. A—there ain’t no diamonds in there to steal, and B—there are, and she wanted them stolen. It’s as simple as that, for the fact of the matter is, she didn’t make up this zany will for no reason. Or she might have been crazy, but I don’t think it myself. Tell me, am I right or am I right?”
“You make it so miraculously simple, you put me to the blush, and Jonathon, too, if he isn’t blushing already from being caught red-handed. It is surely one or the other, but the question is, which?”
“They’re buried all right,” Jonathon said. “Loo has the big diamond and a set of paste stones, and the rest of the set is buried right here.” He tapped the grave with his toe as he spoke.
“In that case,” Blandings stated, “she wanted ‘em stolen. And if she was the sort of mort I think she was from Marcia’s description of her, she means to avenge herself on whoever steals ‘em. Mark my words, Captain, she’ll get back on you if you set shovel to this grave. She’ll take away Swallowcourt; that’s what she’ll do.”
“Well, she won’t, for it’s entailed,” he countered.
“Is it so? Then in that case, you’ve nothing to lose, unless you’re caught in the act, and I think it’s downright crazy of the solicitor not to have the grave guarded. Who’s to know you took ‘em if you ain’t caught with them in your hands.”
“That’s what I thought,” Jonathon agreed, happy to be borne out in his reflections by such a downy cove as the Trump of Mortgagees.
“Sophie wasn’t quite such a slow top as that,” Hillary reminded them. “You forget the money which is not yet accounted for. Its disbursement depends on what happens in the year between her death and the reading of the remainder of the will. Who is to say that the person who digs up the grave does not disqualify himself from inheriting the money?”
“That sounds sensible,” Blandings agreed, “but again, unless the culprit is caught in the act, who the deuce is to know who took the diamonds? You’ll see they’re gone right enough, but with you all blaming each other and the possibility of anyone for miles around having helped himself to them, you’ll be dished to know who’s responsible.”
“Precisely why I am come to visit dear Sophie,” Hillary pointed out.
“Yes, pretty well, Sir Hillary,” Blandings said, “but you don’t plan to sit out here for three hundred and sixty-five nights, through snow and sleet and hail, I don’t suppose?”
“No, I think I shall be knocked senseless, bound, gagged and blindfolded long before that, and the grave torn open. It is my hope that I recognize my assailant and can place a finger on him. Sophie must have counted on me to do it. Whether the diamonds are there or not, she must have planned to take action, posthumously by her will, against whoever opened the grave.”
“It’ll be the devil of an expense, but you must do one of two things,” Blandings informed him.
“I envy you the ability to reduce infinite possibilities to a duo. Tell me my two options,” Hillary begged.
“You either hire a set of guards—and I don’t mean one or two that can be overpowered, but a half a dozen or so good stout fellows to do the job for you, or else you have the coffin dug up officially and put in a safe place.”
“I love you, Mr. Blandings,” Sir Hillary said simply. “I always had the notion that there was a simple solution to this Gordian knot, but till you came along with your sword and cut it open, it eluded me. Of course we must have her coffin exhumed and put in some safe, guarded place. I’ll speak to Fletcher about it. Tell me, before you go away and take your good sense with you, what safe place had you in mind?”
“Jail,” the Trump replied promptly. A strange, howling noise as of ghostly laughter came around them, and they all stared.
“An owl, very likely,” Mr. Blandings said.
“That wasn’t no owl!” Jonathon declared, but hesitated to say in front of two grown men what he considered the noise to be.
“You hear that, Sophie?” Hillary shouted into the dark night, and then let out a raucous hoot of laughter. “Jail it is,” he said, laying an arm over Mr. Blandings’ shoulders. “And serves the old devil right. It’s where she belongs for serving us such a trick. I wonder if Fletcher can arrange it.”
“Seems to me you well-born fellows can arrange anything you want,” Blandings opined.
“If only we could always have your good sense to tell us what we want,” Hillary said, smiling.
“I won’t have auntie put in jail!” Jonathon objected.
“Hush, Captain, you’ll wake the dead,” Hillary warned. “You may as well take your shovel and file home and put them away. You won’t be planting any flowers at the round house.”
“You ain’t putting Aunt Sophie in jail,” Jonathon repeated and picking up his tools, he departed.
Blandings and Thoreau stood looking after him. “He’s to be pitied,” Blandings asserted.
“I have always pitied him very much,” Thoreau said.
“If Swallowcourt was entailed on him, he ought to have seen it was kept up properly. Welbourne’s heir is having the bailiff in to look at the way Skye is being run. Only thing to do when you get a fool or a scoundrel running a valuable property into the ground—an entailed property.”
“He should have done so, certainly.”
“However, he’s a fine figure of a man and has a dandy uniform. I daresay he’ll marry money, as the saying goes.”
“If he don’t, it won’t be for lack of trying,” Sir Hillary told him, and they stood discussing the general state of the world for half an hour. Then, their cigars burnt, Blandings left, and Sir Hillary resumed his vigil at the grave. From behind a not too far distant tombstone, Mr. Fletcher turned his collar up around his ears, and huddled into the folds of a warm horseblanket, waiting for dawn.
Chapter Fourteen
With a visit pending from Gabriel and Sir Hillary, the young ladies were up betimes at Swallowcourt. Up several hours before ever the gentlemen arrived, and growing fidgety as the hands of the clock wound
their way past nine. They would have to leave at ten at the latest to get Gabriel to Maldon in time for the coach at eleven.
“He plans to let him say no more than hello and goodbye,” Luane said, pink with anger. “If he even lets him come at all, that is. There is no counting on him to do as he has promised.”
“He may have changed his mind and decided to let him go tomorrow.”
“Changed his mind and sent him off last night is more like it.”
Sir Hillary’s character grew blacker as the hour grew later, and when ten had come and gone, he could hardly have been worse if he’d stuffed his nephew full of opium and murdered him in cold blood, in Miss Beresford’s opinion.
“He won’t be coming now,” she said. “He wouldn’t even let him come and say good-by to me.”
“I am sure there’s a good explanation for it,” Claudia soothed her. “They will both come riding up any minute; you’ll see. Sir Hillary has decided to take him to Cambridge in the carriage; that’s what it is.”
“Well if that’s what he’s doing, they’ll leave by noon. They should be here by now. Come, cousin, let’s take the gig and go to Chanely.”
This seemed a harmless way to lessen Luane’s anxiety, and Claudia was certain Gabriel had not gone off without first coming to see them, as he had promised.
At Chanely they received the bad news from Mrs. Robinson that Gabriel had been up early and eager to go to Swallowcourt, but his uncle had slept in.
“Slept in!” Luane asked. “He never sleeps in.
“He did today, and still looked fagged when he got up.”
“Out carousing half the night, I suppose, and ringing a peel over us for stopping for a bite of dinner.”
Mrs. Robinson did not deign to reply to this calumny, but to cheer the girl up, she told her Gabriel had thought it safer not to go off to Swallowcourt without his guardian because of the rare temper Sir Hillary had been in the night before, and the upshot of it was that Thoreau’s valet had had to drag him out of bed barely in time to make the coach to Maldon. They had dashed off at five past ten, and it was nip and tuck whether they’d be in time to catch the coach.
“Maybe they missed it,” Claudia suggested.
“If they did, they’ll wait for the two o’clock,” Mrs. Robinson had the hard job of informing them.
Luane indulged in all the fury of a woman scorned and marched from the room.
“Let’s wait till Sir Hillary returns. He will have a message for you from Gabriel—a letter maybe,” Claudia said.
“He wouldn’t give me a message if he had it, and he wouldn’t let Gabriel write me a letter. Is there a letter, Mrs. Robinson?” she asked at the front doorway.
“No, he didn’t leave a letter.”
“You see,” Luane said to her cousin in the tone of one who had suspected the worst all along and could be surprised at no depths of treachery.
They went to the gig and jolted home to Swallowcourt, hardly exchanging a word. Mr. Blandings had left long since with Mrs. Milmont to visit the agent in Maldon, to see if there were any neat little properties to pace out and put a mortgage on.
“I might have gone with them and seen Gabriel off!” Luane wailed. “Everyone is against me!” On this moan she departed from the saloon, to go to her room for a good bout of tears, Claudia suspected. Half-relieved to be rid of her, she took a book into the Crimson Saloon to await Sir Hillary, who she thought would come to them to explain the matter on his return from Maldon.
She was in no charitable mood with him. Bad enough he had kept Gabriel from coming, but that he was out carousing half the night himself was a much worse sin. What really capped her ire was that it was none of her business if he had been. She supposed she ought not even to mention it, but she would, of course.
Captain Tewksbury came ambling into the room while she was in the midst of her dumps and seated himself to get on with the courting.
“Your mama and the Trump are smelling like April and May this morning,” he told her genially.
“You think they will make a match of it?” she asked with interest. It was a lowering reflection that the captain was more likely to know it than herself.
“Crazy if she don’t. Yes, and dashed loose, too, to be sitting around holding his hand if she don’t mean to have him. But she will, of course. As cunning as can hold together, your mother,” he said, with no thought that this speech might do him a disservice.
“If she was allowing him to hold her hand, it must be settled between them.”
“That’s what I thought. What do you think of the old boy?”
“I think I could get used to him as a steppapa, do not you?”
“Yes, by Jove, I could,” he replied readily.
“You? No, no, I meant did you not think I could, for he won’t be your stepfather if mama marries him.”
“Ha, ha, of course. Foolish of me.”
He then rose to strut about the room a little and show off his shoulders and his scarlet tunic. “A fine figure of a man,” he commented to bring the subject to her attention, since she seemed mighty interested in looking out the window.
“Yes, he is very big.”
“A little stouter than I am myself, but I think the shoulders are about the same size.” In this sly fashion he finally got her to glance at his shoulders.
“About the same,” she answered listlessly.
“Do you think him handsome?” he ploughed on.
“He is too dark and swarthy for my taste,” she allowed, as a vision of Sir Hillary wafted unbidden through her mind.
“You prefer fair men, do you?” he asked jauntily, passing a white hand over his blond curls.
“Not so dark as Mr. Blandings.”
“Well, well.” This wanton encouragement led him to take a seat beside her on the sofa. “Your holiday is half up,” he said, thinking to use the brevity of her stay as an excuse for undue haste in his courtship.
“How I dread to leave!”
“Do you? Upon my word, you are kind to say so, Miss Milmont. I am delighted you have enjoyed your visit so much.”
“I have never had such a good visit in my life,” she said with real feeling.
“You’ll like it much better when the place is fixed up,” he assured her, with a wary eye scanning the dilapidation of the chamber.
“A little dust and fraying of carpets doesn’t bother me. It is the people who have made the visit so enjoyable.”
He could hardly believe the soft words of delight she was pouring into his ears. “Good of you to say so,” he said and took her hand in his. His eye fell on the emerald, and he automatically added three thousand to her dowry.
“It sinks me to have to think of leaving in a week,” she confessed, withdrawing her hand.
“I will have to be leaving myself very soon,” he told her, as a preface to getting on with the offer. “I’ll be here but a few days longer, for they will be having a tough time getting on without me at the Guards. In these troubled times a soldier’s hours are not his own. He cannot always stay where he would like to be, with the people he would like to be with.”
“You must dread to leave, when you are eager to set your house to rights,” she commiserated.
“A woman’s touch is what the place needs,” he said leadingly.
“It would be great fun to redo it, but it would require a deal of money,” Claudia remarked, looking around the shabby room.
By Jove, if he didn’t forge ahead and make his offer, she’d be doing it herself. She shared his feelings on every point. He reached out again and grabbed her hand.
“Are you admiring my emerald?” she asked.
“No, I am admiring your pretty little fingers,” he returned smoothly.
“Why, Captain, how gallant you are become!” she laughed and looked once more to the window to see if Sir Hillary was on his way yet. He had, in fact, already cantered his mount round to the stables while they had been talking.
“Are you looking for someone
in particular?” Jonathon asked.
“Sir Hillary said he would call on me this morning,” she admitted with an involuntary blush.
Tewksbury was already very well aware that he had a rival in Sir Hillary. Hadn’t seen him dangle after a girl so obviously in his whole life. Which was another pretty good indication she was well greased, come to think of it. The likes of Thoreau wouldn’t be marrying any penniless country wench. And Thoreau knew she would be leaving soon, too. Without further ado, he was on his knees at her feet, pouring out his heart, while she sat in speechless wonder, incapable of imagining what had gotten into him.
Sir Hillary, all unaware, came into the house the back way from the stable, pushed open the door of the Saloon, and stopped dead in his tracks. There on the sofa with her eyes like saucers sat Miss Milmont trying to disengage her hands from Jonathon’s grasp, and he, with one red arm outstretched, knelt in mid-declaration. A satirical smile settled on Sir Hillary’s countenance, and he stepped in, looking very much as he had on the first occasion Claudia had seen him.
“Is this interruption by any chance untimely?” he asked blandly.
“No!” and “Yes!” came from Claudia and Jonathon simultaneously.
“There seems to be a difference of opinion here, but one always accepts the word of a lady,” he said, advancing towards the embarrassed couple. “Pray, don’t mind me, Jonathon. Go ahead with whatever you were doing. I seem to be always interrupting you in the middle of your activities, do I not?”
Jonathon gazed at him with open hatred. “I can’t very well make an offer in front of a third party,” he said.
“You are too shy, my friend. Thinking it necessary to plant flowers by moonlight so no one would see you, and thinking it would disturb me in the least to overhear an offer in form. I don’t mind at all. Go right ahead.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t,” the captain repeated.
“That is begging the question, surely. Shall I show you how?” Sir Hillary asked. He went to stand in front of Claudia beside Jonathon, who rose and began brushing the dust from his knees.
