She seemed more excited than frightened, but I tried to reassure and calm her.
“I should think the house is safe enough. The fire seems to be in the old stable area. But shouldn’t you go and put on something warmer? Is your mother about?”
She continued to stare at me out of those enormous eyes, while her face broke into a gamine smile that showed her rather uneven teeth and wrinkled her small, pert nose.
“My mum wouldn’t be chasing after me, even if she was here. I’m not all that young. But you’re right about me needing something warm. If you’ll wait half a mo’ I’ll go down with you.”
She flew toward the open door of the front room, and then turned back to me with a broad smile.
“I know who you are! You’re the long-lost Eve—that’s who! You’re my Marc’s old girl friend. Mind you wait for me!”
She vanished into her bedroom, leaving me to stare after her in astonishment.
The “child” was Dacia Keane, the girl who Maggie reported was leading Marc North around by the nose. Apparently he’d had the effrontery to tell her that I had once been his “girl friend.”
I was of a mind not to wait, and I went into the long gallery of this upper floor, seeking the doors to the stair bay that opened off its center.
The girl was quick, however, and she came after me promptly, thrusting her arms into the sleeves of a bright orange coat that stood out about her like a tent, striding toward me in brown leather boots that rose almost to her knees.
When she saw me, she came chummily to tuck her hand through the crook of my arm as though we were already friends. As though some inevitable weaving of fate had brought us together. I’m not sure whether or not I actually felt this, but there was something between us at once—some curiously guarded approach that neither tried to deny as we started down the elliptical stairway together, hurrying toward the scene of Athmore’s latest disaster.
IV
Before we reached the library floor, Nigel Barrow appeared. He had put on brown corduroys and he was still pulling on a sweater as he ran down the stairs from the opposite wing above.
“What’s up?” he called as he came after us. “I heard shouting, but from my window I can’t see a thing.”
“There’s a fire in the stable area,” I told him.
He hurried past us down the stairs and was out the front door before we reached the lower hall. Below us the great chandelier burned brilliantly, lighting the red and white marble diamonds of the floor to a shining gloss. All the suits of Spanish armor stood along the walls, watching through the slits of their crested helmets. The portrait of John Edmond seemed to watch as well, as though he might step down from his picture at any moment to join us in defense of Athmore. Members of the household staff rushed about in various stages of disarray and confusion, lacking direction.
As we reached the hall, Maggie came in through the outside door, muffled in a heavy gray sweater and warm wool trousers, her gray-blond hair rumpled, her expression one of shocked concern.
“Daniel’s been hurt, Morton,” she called to one of the men. “Do get me first-aid things quickly, and ask someone to ring up Dr. Highsmith.”
At mention of the old man’s name my heart leaped in sudden dread, and I watched anxiously as Justin and Nigel came in from outdoors carrying Old Daniel between them. Justin heard Maggie’s words.
“The phone’s out,” he said grimly. “Someone’s cut the outside wire, I’ve already sent for help.”
“I’ll manage Daniel,” Nigel said. “Take care of yourself, Justin.”
Justin paid no attention, though he looked dreadful. Apparently he had dashed outdoors in his shirtsleeves, and his shirt was torn, his face streaked by sooty smudges, his eyes burning a furious blue in his thin face. But Old Daniel looked worse. Gray and still, with a terrible wound in his skull—a wound that no longer bled. They laid him upon a couch and stood back.
“We found him too late,” Justin said grimly. “There’s nothing we can do now.”
Maggie cried out in alarm. “Oh, no! Justin—where was he? What happened?”
Justin answered in short, clipped phrases, obviously fighting his own grief. “When I discovered the fire, I sent one of the boys through the woods to get help from the village. He took the shortcut by way of the ruins and found the old man where a wall had fallen over and crushed him. He’s been dead a long while, I’m afraid.”
I gasped. “But I saw him there this afternoon. I saw him and he was perfectly all right!”
Justin looked at me and then away. “The wall must have fallen in on him afterward.”
Maggie had dropped to her knees beside the couch where Old Daniel lay. She was trying vainly to bathe his wound, to coax him back to life.
“Look out for yourself, Justin,” Nigel repeated more sharply. “That’s a nasty burn.”
At his words Maggie would have risen to see to Justin, but he waved her back. “Never mind. I’m all right.”
He was not all right. His left sleeve hung in scorched shreds, and beneath it the flesh of his forearm burned an angry red.
“I’ll help with that,” I said firmly, giving him no chance to refuse. Morton had brought the first-aid tray and he pulled up a high-backed chair of Spanish leather for Justin. I found shears in the tray and began to slit the sleeve Justin was attempting to rip from his arm. I felt shocked and confused—horrified by what had happened to Old Daniel since I had seen him this afternoon, yet questioning as well. If I had stayed longer, I might have been there to help him when the wall collapsed. Or he might have been talking to me and nowhere near the wall when it fell.
“He knew those walls,” Justin said, paying no attention to what I was doing to his arm. “He should have had better sense than to get near the one we were going to shore up.”
Maggie relinquished her place to Morton and got to her feet. “What about the fire? Do you know how it started? Are they putting it out?”
“It’s not too bad,” Nigel said quietly. “Just one corner of the workshop seems to be damaged. But why didn’t the dogs bark? What happened to the man on guard?”
Justin answered savagely. “He’s all right now, but he was knocked out by someone who came up from behind. And the outside dogs were drugged. They’re still sound asleep. Only Deirdre raised a rumpus here in the house. That’s what wakened me, so I looked out my window and saw the flames.”
He was giving me a hard time with his arm. “Don’t pull away,” I said. “You can’t hit anyone right now.”
After that he held still, though his head was turned from me, as if in distaste for my nearness. Scorched skin showed that flame had already cleansed the area and there was only need for a loose bandage until the doctor came and treated it properly. I worked as gently as I could, and he did not permit himself to wince.
Once I looked around for Dacia Keane, but she had apparently gone outdoors, and I suspected that she would be in the thick of the excitement.
I dared not think about Old Daniel now. I tried to be as impersonal as Justin, and attend solely to what I was doing, forgetting the man whose arm I bandaged. Instead, I found myself consumed by an unwanted tenderness. All too well I remembered the shape of the long-fingered hand I touched. I remembered the way that hand had once smoothed my hair, my shoulder, and how roughly it had shaken me. I knew the very line of his jaw as he looked away from me, knew the way his brown hair grew at each side of his head, with that light streak cutting through above. All these were part of me, part of my knowledge of him, whether I liked it or not. His pain was my pain and I could not work this close to him unmoved. Fire and death must be dealt with in good time, but for the instant I was aware only of my husband and the fact that he had been hurt.
Not until I was through did he finally look at me, and then with a curious expression, as if I were some species he could not comprehend, someone whose very existence he questioned.
“Thank you,” he said in a surprisingly subdued tone. “I’ll go back to the
stable now and see what’s happening. I heard the town fire equipment arrive a little while ago.”
I watched him cross the hall, but before he reached the door, Marc came in from outside, pushing the orange-clad Dacia ahead of him. He was as soot-streaked as Justin, and he looked thoroughly keyed up—yet as though what had happened did not altogether distress him. That he was annoyed with Dacia was evident at once.
“What a bloody little fool you are!” he said, shoving the girl through the doorway. “Pulling a trick like that! If I hadn’t fished you out you might be dead of smoke poisoning by now.”
“But I wanted to see!” Dacia wailed. “There were still flames and I’d never been that close to a real fire before.”
“Getting close to a real fire can be dangerous,” Maggie said tartly.
Dacia swung about, her great brown eyes alive with excitement. “But that’s what I like, Mrs. Graham—the danger! How can anyone be really alive except when there’s danger?” Her gaze fell suddenly upon the body of Old Daniel on the couch, where Morton was drawing a sheet over him. Her color blanched. “Ow! Who’s that?” she cried.
Apparently Marc did not know about Daniel. He crossed the room and jerked back the sheet. “What’s happened here?” he demanded.
Maggie told him and he heard her out, his expression stony. I remembered that Marc and Old Daniel had never been friends. As a boy Marc had constantly teased the old man about the topiary garden and Daniel had never forgiven him. Now, at least, Marc might have shown some compassion, some feeling, but he only turned and spoke again to Dacia.
“Do go back to bed, will you, darling? You’re not needed down here.”
Maggie put her hands to her face. “What can be happening to us? We’ve never had so much trouble at Athmore!”
“Not for a few hundred years, anyway,” Justin snapped. “Old Daniel’s death is a miserable accident. I blame myself for that wall. But the fire was set. And I don’t know why. There’s apparently been no attempt at theft. All these things have been nuisance interruptions, though why anyone should have it in for us—”
“My brother’s a trusting bloke,” Marc interrupted mockingly. “It never occurs to him that it might be to the interest of others to interfere with what he’s doing.”
“Don’t talk rot.” Justin was impatient. “I’m not that important. Not yet.”
Dacia had paid no attention to Marc’s efforts to send her upstairs. She was staring at them all, wide-eyed and still over-exhilarated. “It’s just like in the films! I saw a flick in London last week—with spies trying to get hold of the secret formula, and—”
“Do shut up, darling,” Marc said, regarding the girl with amused tolerance.
Maggie spoke to her across the room. “Do as Marc says and go back to bed, Dacia. You too, Eve. I’ll stay with Daniel and wait for the doctor.”
“And I’ll keep vigil with you,” Nigel said, and drew up a chair for himself.
Justin spoke to his brother. “Come with me, will you? I want another look before the police come.”
At once Dacia was at Marc’s elbow. “Do let me come too!” she pleaded, but Marc shook his head and gave her a quick, light hug before he pushed her in the direction of the stairs. Over the top of her head he cocked a whimsical eyebrow at me and I turned away. Justin was watching, and I did not want to exchange so much as a look with his brother.
When the two of them went outside, I said goodnight to Maggie and Nigel and started upstairs. At once Dacia came clattering after me.
“Fancy you coming here at this very time!” she said, her boots clacking up the steps beside me. “Whatever brought you back, anyway? Nothing’s going to switch Justin in his tracks now, you know. In fact, it’d better not. Not with all that money of Alicia Daven’s coming in so handy.”
I had no wish to discuss my life with this avidly curious girl and I hurried up the stairs. She kept pace with me, her chrysanthemum-shaggy head close to my shoulder.
“You’ve given Marc a dreadful fright, you know,” she confided brightly. “Though you mustn’t let him guess I tipped you off. Of course he’s got good reason to panic, what with owing money up to his ears. It would be a nice mess if Justin decided he had to stay married to you, after all, wouldn’t it? Imagine me marrying old Marc and taking on all those debts! Maybe that’s what he’s got in mind. I wouldn’t put it past him. Not that I blame him. After all, it’s everybody for himself first, don’t you think?”
I climbed the stairs in silence, glad enough to have her chattering about herself instead of me.
“Of course I know I won’t be sitting on top forever,” she ran on. “Not as a model, anyway. Though there’re some people who say I’ve got something that’s especially me, so I can be somebody on my own account, once the Twiggy craze dies out. Right now I’m her type and they’re playing that up. But I do want to be me—not an imitation of somebody else.”
This revelation accounted for quite a bit, I thought. Her hair, which looked as though she had taken the kitchen shears to it, might very well be the creation of someone like Vidal Sassoon in London. She was certainly the type for the current craze, with her slight, straight body and blank little face on which nothing much had as yet been written. Even her huge expressive eyes only expressed her youth and eagerness to be alive. As for Marc’s debts, they were nothing unusual. Justin had long ago despaired of keeping a tight rein on him, and Maggie had been foolishly indulgent.
We reached the top landing of the stairs, and I walked briskly toward the double doors into the long gallery. Dacia bounced beside me, rather like a puppy whose blunders were persistent but good-natured. I wondered how old she was. Seventeen, perhaps?
For all her open curiosity about me, she seemed willing enough to overlook my lack of response to her hints and questions. She shrugged it off and ran to a wall of the darkened room to touch a switch.
Two lighting fixtures on either side of the central doors came to life, while the rest of the long hall remained shadowy and dim.
“Ooh, what a hideous place!” she cried, wrinkling her nose in disrespect.
I had to agree. This was a room I had never liked. Down its entire length the walls were ornately paneled in carved wood that had darkened over the years until it was almost black, and everywhere there were gloomy hints of the Gothic touch. There was Gothic in the arches above the doors, at the highest point of the window frames, even in the panel carving. The ceiling was a vast, ornate pattern of linked plaster rings, and there were two enormous stone fireplaces at either end. Tall chairs from some doge’s palace marched stiffly along the walls, with console tables, or low upholstered benches set at intervals between. Here and there down its length hung portraits of lesser members of the family, with the pale and sad-eyed Mr. Dunscombe facing the stairway doors. I nodded in secret greeting to this unhappy first son-in-law of Mrs. Langley’s. Dacia wasn’t looking.
“What’s a room like this good for?” she demanded, flinging her thin arms wide to encompass its great space, while her orange coat stood out stiffly about her. “With everybody here claiming to be so poor—and all this to keep up! Not that they seem poor to me. They manage to have somebody work on the grounds, and there are servants for indoors. It looks pretty posh, I’d say. Maybe I make more in a year right now than Justin does, but I don’t live like this. Wouldn’t know how. What’s the point, anyway? It’s all out of touch, that’s what it is!”
I had felt something of the same thing when I had lived here. Dacia was right and it was out of touch—if you reckoned that the modern world was what counted most. But perhaps I had a bit more perspective and knew more of Athmore history, than Dacia did. I could not remember without being moved some of the things Justin had told me, so there was an ambivalence in me toward the house.
Dacia took a few steps into the huge room. “Imagine! All this space and nothing to do with it. It’s a bit spooky, don’t you think—with horrible, dark woodwork, a miles-away ceiling, and that ghostly Mr. Dunscombe sta
ring from the wall! Why don’t they hang him in the green-velvet room where he belongs?” Dacia looked suddenly aghast at her own words and then giggled. “Oops!—no pun intended. I suppose that’s where he really hanged himself, isn’t it, so that wouldn’t do. But just think—you could be up here screaming your head off and nobody’d hear you. It must’ve given you the shivers when you first came. How did you get used to it, anyway?”
“I never did,” I said shortly and started toward the door to our corridor in the north wing.
She came after me, doing a saucy dance step in her high boots. “That’s what I’m afraid of. What if I marry Marc and he brings me here? I’d perish of the dark and the way every ancestor in the lot would look down their noses at me. As they must have done with you. Is that why you ran away?”
The question was rhetorical. By now she expected no answers. She simply rushed on, letting her voice go ringing a bit shrilly down the room—challenging the ancient echoes with her here-and-now approach. I felt a twinge of unexpected pity for her. She was right, as I very well knew. The house would no more welcome her than it had me. It would have as little taste for Bow Bells as it had for America.
Dacia swung about as we reached the corridor door and flung both arms wide again, as if she dared the room to snub her. “Never mind! If I come here, I’ll give the old digs a surprise or two. What a place this would be to hold a fashion show! Marc could bring some of my friends from Carnaby Street and we could get into our mod clothes and give the house the shock of its life. What do you think?”
I had to smile at her eagerness, and at the impertinent tilt of her boyish head. Three years ago I had given the house a few shocks myself—but Dacia’s shocks would be shriller and more colorful, though perhaps no more shattering. Mine had been on the quietly stubborn side, but they had smashed things up in the course of a year anyway. Mainly they had smashed up what had existed so tenuously between Justin and me. I had only wanted his love, but he could not accept me as I really was and keep on loving me.
Hunter's Green Page 7
