Cyril excused himself before the dessert was served. He said he had just remembered that Sir Charles Ponte had asked him to drop over that evening. Sir Charles was a military martinet whose estates bordered the marquess’s to the south. Lady Bertha acidly expressed her amazement that a gentleman like Sir Charles should wish the company of a young man like Cyril, but Cyril had already left.
Mrs. Plumb was the next to go, protesting faintly that late nights gave her the headache. She seemed unable to stay awake for longer than an hour at a time.
Then the marquess was called to the telephone, which was, as in most country houses, situated in the draftiest and darkest corner of the hall.
He came back looking worried, and bent over Tilly’s chair.
“That was some relative of old Crump’s,” he said. “He’s one of my tenant farmers. He has had a heart attack and I really must go and see him. They’ve called the doctor, of course, but you know how it is, Tilly, in these family emergencies…?”
“It’s all right,” said Tilly, her heart sinking. “I will entertain your aunts until you get back.”
Then Toby Bassett muttered that he was feeling unwell and begged to be excused, and Tilly was indeed alone with her two formidable tormentors, who proceeded to make the most of it.
In sugary-sweet tones, they recounted all the marquess’s amourous adventures, until Tilly felt ready to sink under the dinner table. In despair, she led them through to the drawing room, hoping for the support of Francine, but the lady’s maid was unaccountably absent and Masters, who answered her summons, sent a footman in search of Francine, but that young lady was not to be found anywhere in the great mansion.
I am a married woman, thought Tilly fiercely, and this is my home. I don’t want to endure another minute of these horrible women. Aloud, she said, “You must excuse me, ladies, but I have a headache and I am going to bed,” and before they could open their painted mouths (coral pink—the latest shade) to reply, she had left the room.
Tilly bounced into the sanctuary of her sitting room and leaned her back against the door, all that the aunts had told her of her husband’s love affairs pounding in her ears. But that’s all over, she thought. It must be over. And then she saw the flowers and the card on the low table in front of the fireplace.
The card was typewritten and carried a brief message: MEET ME OVER BY THE BATCHETT’S SPINNEY AND WE CAN HAVE A FEW MOMENTS TOGETHER. PHILIP.
Even his name was typewritten. Tilly, who had never seen her husband’s handwriting, assumed he was one of those unfortunate people with handwriting that looked as if a drunken spider had staggered over the paper, and he had therefore sensibly resorted to the typewriter, even for the writing of personal notes. The flowers were beautiful deep red roses nestling in a bed of maidenhair fern.
Then she frowned. He hadn’t mentioned any particular time but, the evening was beautiful, so it would be pleasant to wait for him, faraway from the house and its contingent of unwanted guests.
She threw a warm cashmere shawl over her shoulders and, still wondering about the whereabouts of the absent Francine, slipped quietly down the stairs and across the hall. The sound of muted conversation filtered from the drawing room. The aunts were hard at it—No doubt taking my character apart piece by piece, thought Tilly as she quietly let herself out of the main door. She suddenly realized she did not know the whereabouts of Batchett’s Spinney.
An elderly gardner was weeding a rose bed at the side of the drive. He stood up and touched his forelock as Tilly approached. Aye, he kenned fine where Batchett’s Spinney was. It was the other side of the Home Wood. Ye couldn’t miss it. There was a big swing hanging over a bit pool, where the village bairns had a bit of a swim.
Tilly thanked him and the elderly Scotsman bent once more to his work. It was a beautiful evening with the leafy branches of the Home Wood stretching up to a tender green sky that faded to pale pink near the horizon. Birds chirped sleepily from the trees and vague rustlings from the undergrowth showed that the nocturnal animals were already on the prowl. Tilly picked her way carefully through the darkness of the wood. A pheasant suddenly rocketed up in front of her, sending her heart flying into her mouth.
She came out of the wood and found she was standing almost on the edge of the pool, which was fed by a bubbling stream. The pool looked cool and calm, its black surface mirroring the dying light of the sky above. On the far side was a stunted fir tree with one long branch sticking out at right angles high above the pool. On this, someone had suspended a swing by long ropes, the seat of the swing being a worn plank held by large knots. It was tied back against the trunk of the tree at the top of a tall, rough ladder. When released, the swing would dangle out over the pool a good twelve feet above the water. Tilly guessed that the village boys must use it as a diving perch.
There was no sign of the marquess.
Great boulders were piled higgledy-piggledy around the pool, as if thrown down at random by a giant hand. White bramble flowers shone in the gloom of tangled shrubbery beside the water and a stand of wild roses trailed thorny tendrils on the calm surface.
Tilly eyed the swing. Francine would not approve and it would be a tomboyish thing to do, but the lure was irresistible. She climbed gingerly up the ladder, hampered by her long skirts, and untied the knot that held the swing and, seating herself on it, swung out sideways from the tree until she was suspended high above the pool. Tilly was happy just to sit there, high above the ground, drinking in the peace of the evening, waiting for her beloved husband to arrive.
Perhaps he would take her to the seaside, thought Tilly happily. Tilly had never seen the sea, her father preferring to remain immured at Jeebles, letting the world come to him. Tilly remembered how amazed her husband had looked at dinner when she had confessed she did not know how to swim. He probably thought such a tomboy—or ex-tom-boy, Tilly corrected herself severely—would know how to swim. She had been about to ask him if they could not possibly visit somewhere like Brighton, but the aunts had closed in with their malicious remarks and the question had never been put.
The sky deepened to a strange dark green and the first stars began to appear.
Tilly swung dreamily to and fro, the fine lace of her dress fluttering out behind her.
Suddenly she received an enormous shove from behind and seemed to go sailing up, up toward the stars.
She came hurtling back, trees and sky and pool tumbling dizzily before her eyes.
“Philip!” shouted Tilly, half laughing, half screaming. “You are an utter beast! Stop it or I shall land in the water!”
Another massive shove in the middle of her back nearly sent her flying from her perch and she clutched hard at the ropes as the night sky seemed to swing down to meet her.
Her cashmere shawl went fluttering down and lay like a dying swan on the surface of the pool.
As the swing started its dizzying rush back Tilly wildly twisted her head around—and screamed in earnest this time. A creature out of her worst nightmares was crouched halfway up a tree behind the fir that held the swing, so that he could catch it on the backswing. He, or it, was dressed in black, except that where there should have been a human head was a grotesque pink carnival mask fixed in an evil grin.
Another vicious push sent her flying off the seat of the swing and she clung with both hands to one of the ropes, while again the night sky rushed to meet her and the now brightly shining stars flared and danced before her terror-stricken eyes.
In a flash she realized that whoever it was—and dear God, it could not be Philip—planned to throw her forward toward the pool, so that if she did not drown in the pool, she would surely crack her head against the rocks. Poor Lady Tilly, they would say. What a terrible accident!
All this rushed through her mind in a second and as the swing rushed down and back and up toward her assailant she twisted around so that the seat was pointed toward that nightmarish figure.
But it deftly caught the other rope and held on, the nigh
tmarish mask staring into her terrified eyes. Then, in a strange, sibilant, sexless whisper that was to haunt her dreams for many nights to come, the figure said, “You’ll soon get tired. Your arms will get so very tired and then you’ll drop… drop to your death.”
Another almighty shove and off and up she went again. The swing was so high above the ground that each massive push seemed to send her flying nearer to the sky.
Tilly found her voice and began to scream. With an acrobatic skill borne of sheer desperation, she caught hold of the other rope at the last minute and swung herself over, drew back her legs, and kicked out with all her might. The grotesque carnival figure crashed back down through the branches and Tilly swung back out, with less momentum this time, hanging on for dear life, screaming and screaming and then hearing an answering shout from the woods.
Slower and slower went the swing until it hung gently over the pool. Now all Tilly had to do was swing gently over to the ladder, climb off, and climb down.
“Tilly!”
The marquess stood on the far side of the pool.
Weak with relief, her trembling arms lost their strength and she let go of the rope and plunged down into the dark waters of the pool.
The weight of her clothes dragged her down, down, down until her feet touched the mud at the bottom and, with what seemed like the last of her senses, she marshaled her forces, bent her knees, and thrust herself up through the black water roaring in her ears, until her head broke the surface. A pair of strong arms grabbed hold of her and she gasped and struggled and fought until she heard her husband’s voice saying, “It’s me, Tilly. Philip. Relax and don’t fight me and I’ll have you out of this in a trice.” Two swift strokes brought her to the bank, and the marquess pulled his shivering, trembling wife to safety.
At first he could not grasp what she was saying as the frightened words tumbled out of her in an incoherent jumble. At last the story emerged and he wrapped her tenderly in his dry jacket, which he had left on a bush when he had plunged in to rescue her.
“Cyril!” he exclaimed between his teeth. “It must have been Cyril. Come on! Back to the house. Let’s catch him.”
Tilly tried to pull him back. It couldn’t possibly be Cyril, that frightening figure in the tree. She wanted to stay secure in the circle of her husband’s arms and never leave them.
But he gently urged her back through the wood, forcing her to quicken her steps.
When they reached Chennington, Tilly was bundled upstairs to be bathed and dried with the assistance of a housemaid, since Francine had not reappeared.
The marquess changed rapidly out of his sopping evening clothes into an old jumper and flannels and, striding through the long rooms of his mansion and crying for blood, he demanded the presence of Cyril Nettleford. The aunts were roused from their gossip in the drawing room to startled dismay and exclamations. Even Mrs. Plumb flitted down the stairs like a pale ghost of one of the Heppleford ancestors, and a sober and strangely elated Toby Bassett joined in the hunt.
Cyril was nowhere to be found.
The clanging of the bell at the main door drew all the servants and searchers there. Cyril Nettleford was carried in on a makeshift stretcher. His unlovely face was bruised, cut, and scratched, and his eyes were closed.
“What the hell happened to him?” demanded the marquess of the two farm laborers who were carrying him in. “Fell out of a tree?”
“No, my lord,” vouchsafed one of the men, shuffling his feet and tugging his forelock. “Mr. Nettleford was lying in the ditch. That there dogcart was overturned with ’er side all stove in. Reckon he hit his head on a rock.”
Cyril opened his eyes and grinned faintly. “Sorry to be a bore,” he whispered. “Something startled the horse and it reared up and overturned the dogcart. I’m just shaken. No bones broken.”
“Where were you?” demanded the marquess.
“I was at the corner of the road, just outside the main gates,” said Cyril in hurt surprise. “I don’t see why you must go on at a fellow like this. I’m sorry about your carriage, but it wasn’t my fault. I was on my road back from Sir Charles Ponte’s place. Don’t look at me like that. If you don’t believe me, telephone the old boy.”
“I shall do just that,” said the marquess. He gave a sovereign to the gratified farm laborers, who assisted Cyril to a chair beside the hall fireplace and took their leave.
The marquess strode toward the telephone and picked up the heavy earpiece and told the exchange to connect him with Sir Charles.
To his surprise, Sir Charles immediately confirmed that Cyril had only left the place a bare half hour ago. “Yes, yes, yes,” bawled Sir Charles jovially, “was with me all the time, what. That what you want to know?”
The marquess thanked him and slowly put the earpiece back on the stand. It must have been Cyril. And yet, now it seemed as if there was no possible way Cyril could have been attempting to kill Tilly, for, at the crucial time, he was evidently at Sir Charles Ponte’s.
Complaining sulkily over his harsh treatment and saying that Philip should at least have the grace to apologize, Cyril was assisted off to bed, casting many a languished glance at James, the footman, as that young man helped him up the stairs.
Tilly shrank back against the banister as he was helped past. She then listened in growing fright to the marquess’s tale of Cyril’s innocence. “Don’t worry, my dear,” he added anxiously, seeing the large tears running down Tilly’s face, “we shall telephone the police in the morning and they will get to the bottom of this. Never fear.”
“It’s not that,” wailed Tilly, handing him a note. “This was on my dressing table. Francine has left me and she doesn’t even say why.”
The marquess silently read the note. It was very brief. Francine presented her regrets to Lady Tilly, but wished to terminate her employment on the spot. Milady was not to worry about her. She was well and happy.
“And that’s not all,” cried Tilly. “That note I told you about. The typewritten one. It’s gone! Even the flowers have gone. Oh, my poor head. Do you think I imagined the whole thing?”
He shook his fair head slowly, still staring down at the note. “There was nothing up with old Crump either,” he remarked bitterly. “So my telephone call was a hoax as well. Someone wanted me out of the way while he tried to murder you.”
There was a long silence. One of the servants had lit the fire in the hall and it crackled merrily. All the clocks in the great house began to chime the midnight hour, from the deep bong-bong-bong of the grandfather clocks downstairs to the silvery tinkle of the French clocks in the salons on the first floor.
“Well, I must say,” twittered Lady Bertha, “nothing like this would have ever happened at dear Chennington before.”
“So sad,” sighed Lady Mary. “I feel as if the peace of one of England’s greatest homes has been broken forever….”
The elegant Lady Tilly disappeared in a flash and the old tomboy emerged as Lady Tilly rounded on the aunts in a fury.
“Oh, go to bed, you troublemaking old frumps!” she yelled.
“That’s the stuff, Tilly!” said Toby Bassett, grinning.
“And don’t say you’ve never been so insulted,” pursued Tilly, her face flushed and her bosom heaving, “cos with your rotten, spiteful manners I’m sure you have, many times!”
“Well!” was all the bridling and snorting aunts could muster, their feather headdresses shaking with rage.
“Quite right, my dear,” came the faint voice of Mrs. Plumb from a dark corner, startling them all. “Mary and Bertha were always a nuisance, even as gels. I remember when you, Bertha, wanted to run off with that waiter from Brown’s Hotel and you, Mary—”
But that was as far as she got. With a frantic rustling of silk skirts, the aunts fled to the safety of their rooms.
The marquess put an arm around his wife’s shoulders and led her into the drawing room. Toby followed silently behind.
They sat in silence for a few moment
s and then the marquess spread out Francine’s letter, which he had crushed in his hand. “You don’t think,” he said slowly, “that it could have been a woman up that tree? I mean, someone could have been paying Francine…”
Tilly angrily shook her head. “Francine’s the best friend I ever had. She would never do anything to hurt me. That note may be a forgery.”
Masters was sent to bring down Francine’s book, which itemized the contents of Tilly’s jewel box and lace safe, and the handwriting in the book exactly matched that of the note.
Masters coughed discreetly. “The dogcart has been taken round to the stables, my lord. The horse has sustained no hurt. I cannot understand it, my lord. The horse was Dapple, a very mild-mannered gelding.”
“Thank you, Masters,” said the marquess. “That will be all. No, wait a bit. Bring us something to drink.”
“May I suggest champagne, my lord?” said Masters. “A couple of bottles of Dom Pérignon would have a soothing, yet enlivening effect.”
“Just so,” replied the marquess with a ghost of a smile. “By all means let us be soothed and enlivened.”
Tilly stared miserably at her husband. Everything had been so perfect and now it was all spoiled by this brooding fear. Her husband looked heartbreakingly handsome as he lay back in his chair, with the soft glow from the lamp beside him gilding his hair, the faded blue of his jumper bringing out the startling blue of his eyes.
The arrival of the champagne caused a little bustle. Toby looked at it thoughtfully, but to everyone’s surprise, declined.
“Something happened to me at the vicarage,” he said. “I suddenly thought I might settle down and get married myself, and no nice girl would want a fellow around who was always drunk.”
Despite her misery, Tilly could not refrain from flashing a triumphant look at the marquess. So Toby had fallen for the pretty Emily after all!
“I may leave for London tomorrow,” went on Toby. “I’ll pop into the vicarage before I go. There’s something I want to see the old man about. You know, I don’t suppose any of us feel sleepy with all this mystery. I, for one, would love to take a stroll down the drive to take a look at that place where Cyril was supposed to have overturned.”
Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus Page 54
