Kitty

by Beaton, M. C.

  The detective flicked idly over the pages. “Ah, here we are… Henley… let’s see… married Amelia Pevvy… daughter of… what?”

  “What is it?” asked Peter.

  “Just that we’re absolute fools. Amelia Pevvy of Pevvy Chase—a manor about fourteen miles from where we’re sitting,” groaned Albert.

  “Where’s that insufferable ass, Dwight-Hammond?” roared Peter, erupting into the hall.

  “What is it?” asked Henry Dwight-Hammond sulkily, emerging from the drawing room with an adoring deb on his arm.

  “We need your auto and you’re going to drive us,” said Peter, disengaging the young man from his partner and pushing him toward the door.

  “Here, I say!” expostulated Henry. “You could at least ask nicely.”

  “We haven’t time to say ‘pretty please,’ you unmitigated ass,” roared Peter. “Get in that damned car or I’ll tear you apart.” His face was white with strain and his eyes blazed with fury.

  Henry gave in with bad grace. Albert spread an ordnance survey map on his lap, and with the help of a lantern, navigated the motorcar along the country roads.

  Twice they took the wrong turning and twice precious minutes were lost while all three raged at one another. At last they turned into the gloomy driveway of Pevvy Chase and there in the light of the car lamps, they could make out a female figure running toward them. Gulping and panting for breath, the terrified figure of Jenkins looked up at them. She clutched Peter’s hand. “Lady Henley took away your missus for a walk today,” she gasped. “But she came back alone.”

  “Get in the car,” snapped Peter. They drove up to the entrance of the house in anxiety-ridden silence.

  Lady Henley was ensconced in the dining room. She threw down her napkin and glared at the three men. Jenkins had slipped away as quietly as a shadow.

  “What do you mean by bursting in here?” demanded Lady Henley.

  “Where’s my wife?” roared Peter.

  Lady Henley gave a fat shrug. “Don’t know,” she said with magnificent indifference and then glared out of the window. “What are all these policemen doing galumphing about my lawns?”

  “I must ask you to come along with me for questioning,” said Albert Grange, stepping forward.

  Lady Henley’s mouth took on a bluish tinge. “My heart pills,” she gasped. She groped in her reticule and extracted a small box, opened it and popped a pill in her mouth. Then she turned to Peter Chesworth with a gloating smile. “By the time you find your little wife, you won’t much like what’s left of her.” Her eyes suddenly bulged and she made several horrible gurglings in the back of her throat.

  “She’s taken poison!” shouted Grange.

  There was an almighty crash and Lady Henley fell across the dining table. She died, as she had lived, with her face in a plate of food.

  Albert Grange blew his whistle and several policemen burst into the room. “Round up the servants and find that maid of Lady Henley’s.”

  Cowering and trembling, Jenkins was at last dragged into the room. Albert Grange motioned to the girl to sit down and poured her a glass of brandy. Lord Chesworth could only wonder at the little detective’s patience. “Now, look here, my girl. Drink up your brandy and then tell us if you have any idea where Lady Chesworth might be.”

  The maid drank the brandy in one gulp and a little color crept into her pallid cheeks. “I followed them a good bit,” she said in a whisper. “I’ll take you as far as I can.” She looked at the dead body of Lady Henley. “At least she can’t hurt me anymore.”

  They hurried her out to the motorcar, Peter Chesworth praying under his breath that his wife was still alive.

  After Lady Henley had left them, Checkers had started to move toward Kitty, unbuckling the belt of his trousers. Then he hesitated and looked out of the window. “Better wait till dark,” he muttered. “You won’t be going anywhere, my Lady. You can have a nice afternoon thinking about your death.” He bent and slobbered a kiss on her averted face, and with a fat chuckle, took himself off.

  For an hour Kitty sat helplessly, feeling sick and dizzy from the blow on her head. She realized it would be no use screaming or they would have gagged her. The rising gale wailed through the trees outside, intensifying the loneliness. Kitty tried to move her wrists but they were so tightly bound that her hands had gone numb. She looked across at the latch on the door. It was a simple iron catch which pushed up to open it. Kitty felt sure that Checkers had not bothered to lock the door. Twisting her head, she could see that the chair she was bound to was of light cane. She gave a tentative jump and found that she had bumped a little way across the floor.

  It was then that terror flooded her as a small ray of hope began to creep into her mind. Without hope, she had been numb. With icy sweat trickling down her body, she tried another jump and got nearer still to the door. Another few bounces and she was under the latch. Muttering a desperate prayer, she lowered her head and banged it on the iron latch. It bounced up and the door swung open on the windy field and the road to freedom.

  Her legs trembling and her heart pounding, Kitty bounced out into the field—and stuck fast as the legs of the chair sank into the soft earth.

  She would not give up now! Still bound tightly to the chair, she fell to the ground and started to roll to the hedge at the edge of the field. Over and over, her face digging into the soft ground, straining every muscle, she finally rolled into a ditch and stared up at the storm-torn sky.

  Kitty turned over on her side and tried to control the terrible trembling that racked her body from head to foot. Her eye caught the dull gleam of a rusty scythe blade a few yards from where she lay. She wrenched herself over and over, her face stung by long nettles, until she was lying against it. It took her fifteen minutes of panting and straining, until she got her wrists into position against the dull blade. She could only move them a little way up and down the scythe. A crow perched on the edge of the broken scythe handle and watched her every move like a bird of ill-omen. The strands suddenly parted all at once and she bit her lip until the blood came to stifle the cry of pain which rose to her lips as the feeling began to return to her hands. Precious minutes were spent massaging them until she was finally able to free her feet.

  Kitty stumbled erect and looked around, gathering her strength for a plunge into the woods. Then at the far corner of the field she saw Checkers returning. She would crouch down in the ditch until he had gone into the cottage and then make her escape.

  But before she knew what was happening Kitty found herself striding to meet Checkers with the scythe in her hand. Through a red mist of rage she saw his start of surprise and heard his complacent chuckle.

  “So Kitty has claws,” said Checkers advancing on her. “Good. I likes them with a bit of fight in ’em.” He lumbered towards her, still laughing and chuckling.

  In one brief, lucid flash before the red mist closed upon her again, Kitty thought with surprise, “Now I know what a cornered rat feels like.”

  She sidestepped Checkers as he reached for the scythe and swiped him across the legs. He shrieked with pain and bent to clutch his injured legs when Kitty raised the blunt edge of the scythe and brought it down on his bald head, terror and rage lending her twice the strength. Checkers fell and lay still.

  Kitty turned and ran out into the lane, headlong into the gloom and the green tunnels. Night had fallen and still she ran, choking and sobbing for breath.

  The ground about her seemed to heave with the increasing violence of the storm, although she was protected from its full force by the height of the hedges on either side of the road.

  She ran on around a corner of the lane and found herself blinded by a dazzling light in the middle of the road and started to scramble up the steep bank to safety. The sound of her name being shouted by several people finally penetrated Kitty’s fear and she stopped in her flight and slowly turned. The first person she saw was Mr. Albert Grange and with a sob of relief, she threw herself into his arms.r />
  “Now, then, now then,” said the detective. “You’re all right now. Everything’s going to be all right. Here’s your husband.”

  Kitty looked over his shoulder into Peter Chesworth’s face and collapsed, unconscious, into the detective’s arms.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Peter Chesworth was in the country and his wife was in town. “This could go on forever,” he sighed to himself.

  Autumn was sending its red and gold colors sweeping through the woods around Reamington Hall. Smoke rose lazily into the clear air from the gardener’s bonfire, a bumper harvest had been brought in, and fires crackled merrily in all the rooms of the Hall to disperse the October chill.

  Kitty had been taken to the Thackerays’ home at Cowes to recover from her fright and exhaustion. On the second day she had contracted pneumonia and for two weeks she hung between life and death, as her husband paced outside her room upstairs, and downstairs, the Thackerays grumbled about the enforced sort of semimourning which hung over their home. They blamed it all on Kitty’s origins. The middle classes, as everyone knew, were notorious wet blankets.

  Finally, little by little, Kitty began to recover her strength as summer fled from the countryside and the yachts were hauled up for repairs. Chrysanthemums blazed in the rooms instead of roses. The Indian-summer sun dawned and set and still Kitty would not see her husband.

  Lady Mainwaring tried to reason with her but Kitty only began to sob in a weak way and shake her head.

  The shock of the final attempt on her life had left Kitty nervous and jumpy and unwilling to face anyone who had hurt or humiliated her in the slightest. Henry Dwight-Hammond and Cyril Lawton had been asked to leave a long time ago, for the very sight of either of them sent Kitty into a fever. The Thackerays had finally departed for Rooks Neuk, leaving Kitty and Lady Mainwaring alone with a skeleton staff.

  At last Emily Mainwaring felt that she would scream with boredom from the daily diet of gentle walks, light meals, and lengthy silences. She at last confronted Kitty with the sharp remark, “I think you’re turning into a spoiled brat!”

  Kitty looked at her with tears forming in her eyes.

  “Oh, don’t start blubbering again,” snapped Lady Mainwaring. “I’m tired to death of being stuck down here and I think you’re now well enough to think about someone other than yourself. So there it is, harsh as it may be. I’m bored and your husband is at Reamington Hall, worrying himself to death about you.”

  Kitty shifted uneasily and dried her eyes. “I’m sorry, Emily. I don’t seem to have much spirit left. You’re right. Let’s go back to London.”

  “I didn’t say anything about London. I’m going to London. You’re going to Reamington Hall.”

  “Oh, not yet. Please Emily,” begged Kitty. “Let me stay with you for a little bit.”

  “Oh, well,” shrugged Emily. “I may as well take you home with me. But remember, I’m a social animal. I like my theaters and parties and my house full of people.”

  Kitty suddenly smiled for the first time in weeks. “I feel better already. I think I could even look forward to a party.”

  “That’s more like it,” said Emily. “Now, don’t you feel strong enough and curious enough to know the outcome of all the trouble?”

  Kitty took a deep breath and nodded. Emily Mainwaring sat back and began her story.

  “First of all, Grange and a squad of policemen went up the road and found Checkers unconscious in the field. Someone had hit him with a scythe…. Good God… was that you?

  “Anyway, they discovered he has a record of assault and violence as long as your arm. The rest of the servants at Pevvy Chase also had pretty rotten records, except for Jenkins. Lady Henley took poison before she could be charged with anything so that’s good riddance to bad rubbish. Your mother was sent to the hospital suffering from an overdose of fairly complicated drugs administered by Euphemia Henley.

  “Well, the long and the short of it is, your mama’s her usual horrible self—oops, sorry—and has plunged into her husband’s old business and seems in a fair way to be trebling her fortune. She says the aristocracy are the scum of the earth and prefers to associate with merchants’ wives.

  “Mr. Grange got promoted to Chief Detective-Inspector although he feels the honor was given to him not because he solved the case but because he appears to be on first name terms with your husband… which is a very cynical way of looking at it, but probably true.

  “Your husband went back to work on his beloved estate after about your hundredth refusal to see him. Let me see, what else? Oh yes, the Dwight-Hammond sisters discovered that one of their maids had put the snakes in the bed. A man answering Checkers’ description had told her it was just a bit of a joke and that they were harmless grass snakes. Needless to say, she got well paid for doing it. She broke down and confessed when she read about your adventures in the papers. And it was Checkers who tried to kill you by sawing off the balcony.

  “So that’s that. Let’s get packed and get out of this dead-alive hole.”

  The house in Regents Park looked the same but did not feel the same. Early morning frost had blackened the remaining flowers and a mist rose from the canal, but it was Lady Mainwaring’s constant entertaining which made the difference. Kitty felt as though she was living in the middle of an eternal house party and after describing her ordeal for the fifteenth time to yet another party of guests, she began to feel that the whole thing had been a dream.

  An odd feeling of belonging nowhere, neither to house nor class, assailed her. As the nights drew on, she began to think sentimentally about the house in Hampstead, forgetting the penny-pinching and the chill rooms.

  Hetty! She had forgotten all about Hetty. Perhaps if she could stay with her old friend in Hampstead for a bit, she could get her bearings again. She did not want to think about her husband. Kitty felt, unfairly, that most of her trouble was Peter’s fault. She could not remember his kindness and endearments; only the mocking aristocrat of her wedding night who said he had only married her for her money.

  But Kitty did not realize how much she had changed. Used to the type of society who called in for a visit at a country house and then stayed for weeks, she never dreamt of sending Hetty a message. Packing her trunks and calling for the carriage, Kitty could only see the rosy picture in her mind of sitting in front of the fire with Hetty and feeling at home.

  It was late afternoon by the time she was ready to leave. Lady Mainwaring had not returned from her calls so Kitty scribbled a note of explanation and left it on the hall table.

  As she was getting into the carriage, she felt a gentle touch on her arm and found herself staring down into the thin, frightened face of Jenkins, the maid.

  “Please, my Lady,” begged Jenkins. “Just a little money, for the love of God. I can’t find work anywhere.”

  Kitty felt her face burning with guilt. Emily was right. She had thought of no one but herself. She told the coachman to wait and led the shivering maid into the house and rang for the housekeeper. “This is Jenkins who has just been employed as my personal maid.”

  The housekeeper looked at the shabby girl without her face moving a muscle. Lady Mainwaring trained her servants well.

  “Please see that she is supplied with the necessary clothes and uniforms,” Kitty went on. “I really must leave. The carriage is waiting.” Jenkins looked downcast and Kitty cursed herself for her own selfishness. “Come upstairs with me a minute, Jenkins, and I will explain your duties.”

  Once in her bedroom, Kitty turned to the maid. “Why didn’t you get in touch with me sooner, Jenkins?”

  Jenkins bowed her head. “The police found out about my prison record so no one would let me near you.”

  Kitty fumbled in her reticule and found her purse. “Here’s some money, Jenkins, just to get some odds and ends. I shall probably be away for only a few days.”

  Jenkins’s face lit up with a radiant smile. “I’ll serve you to the end of my days, my Lady. You see if I
don’t.”

  “Nonsense!” said Kitty. “I should hope you will get married soon. All young girls should have a husband,” she added lightly and then bit her lip as a picture of her own husband came into her mind. But she forced herself to talk patiently and calmly to the girl about her duties, not realizing that by this very action, Kitty Harrison was now the Baroness Reamington in more than just title. Then having assured herself that Jenkins would be taken care of until her return, she ran lightly down the stairs and told the coachman to drive to Hampstead.

  How jolly and familiar everything looked! How the lights sparkled from Carson’s bakery. How beautiful and familiar her beloved Heath looked, stretched out peacefully under the London twilight.

  But at the Carsons’ home in Gospel Oak, Kitty received her first setback. Hetty was married, explained a much-flustered Mrs. Carson. Yes, indeed. And to John Stokes. And what was even more wonderful, they had bought Kitty’s old home just up the hill. Kitty’s face fell. She had not envisaged any men in the picture.

  After she had left Mrs. Carson, Kitty directed the carriage to her old home and then stood for a minute by the gate. From the outside it did not seem to have changed a bit.

  The door flew open and Hetty bounced out. “Kitty! I saw the carriage arriving and—” She broke off as she saw the coachman unstrapping Kitty’s trunk from the back of the carriage.

  “I came to stay for a little,” blurted out Kitty. “I didn’t know you were married, Hetty. If it’s at all inconvenient, I’ll leave.”

  “Not at all,” burbled Hetty, excited at the prospect of having a notorious society lady under her roof. “John will be delighted. You were in all the papers. It was ever so exciting. Wait till the neighbors learn who’s come to stay!”