Kit, Harry explained, had inherited from his Uncle Michael whose own son, Freddy, had died in a car crash in the seventies the summer before he was to go up to Oxford.
“Hang on! Would that be the same accident that killed Meg’s uncle what’s-his-name, not really her uncle?”
“Her cousin Jerry, Gerald Bebberidge-Thorpe, yes.”
Harry continued. Kit’s father, Michael’s younger brother, became the heir at that point, but he had died of a heart attack before his older brother pegged out, so when Kit’s Uncle Michael died it all went to Kit. The plan then was that Kit and his widowed mother, who had been living in the Dower House, would move up to the Big House, and Kit’s widowed Auntie Fiona would retire gracefully to the Dower House.
Any fool could see, however, that Auntie Fiona regarded the impending exchange about as cheerfully as if it were her funeral, and in the end, Kit’s mother (“a marshmallow, would rather give in than fight, rather like Kit, actually”) had announced she was tired of the country anyway, and had taken a flat in London. Which left Kit in the Big House with Auntie Fiona and Aunt Dotty.
“Aunt Dotty?”
“Yes,” Harry replied with a grin. “I am married to Kit’s aunt. But it’s not like it sounds; Dotty came as a big surprise to her parents. She was born twenty-odd years after her brothers were, so I am married not to an old woman but to an extremely attractive young one.”
Kathryn laughed and offered him her congratulations.
Harry responded with thanks, slowed the car, and put on the turn signal.
They turned off the modest two-lane road they’d been traveling and into a positively self-effacing single-lane track on which the asphalt quickly gave way to dirt.
“Do tell me this is the back way,” said Kathryn, ducking as the branch of an overhanging tree whacked the corner of Harry’s windshield before taking a swipe at her face.
“I say, I am sorry, I didn’t know the greenery had gotten quite so—”
“Aggressive?”
“Overgrown. It is the back way, in fact, or at least the side way, but there’s a fabulous view up ahead and I thought you’d like to see it. We’ve got the time; we’re a few minutes early.”
The greenery drew back, an open space appeared, and Harry pulled the little car off of the road onto a level stretch of grass.
“Hop out,” he commanded. “It’s just through here.” He indicated a path that disappeared between two large bushes.
Together they picked their way through the exuberant undergrowth, Harry explaining that this was the spot from which all the postcard pictures were taken of the house. Before they had invented helicopters, that is.
Kathryn rounded a dense copse of pale green branches to find herself at the brow of a hill. Below her the ground fell away in endless furlongs of summer grass, and on this huge emerald cushion rested, about a mile away, a vast Tudor palace of mellow pink brick surmounted by a hundred ornamental chimneys.
Kathryn’s jaw fell open so far she looked like a rather pretty fish. Her eyes ran over the acres of rosy walls, the mullioned windows, the courtyards and quadrangles, and she thought that she must be looking at the most beautiful house in the world. Then something in her mind clicked and she recognized it. Of course it was the most beautiful house in the world. She had thought so for years; she had twice visited it as a tourist; the picture of it in a book of English stately homes had made her an Anglophile when she was a teenager sitting in her high school library. She laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“This is Morgan Mallowan!”
“And?”
“Oh, it’s just me being confused again. I thought you were going to show me Kit’s house.”
“This is Kit’s house.”
Kathryn gaped at Harry, then back at the Tudor palace, then back at Harry again. “But Morgan Mallowan belongs to the Mallowans.”
“Oh, didn’t anybody explain? The family name is pronounced ‘Mallen,’ but it’s spelled just like the house. The house has kept all three syllables, but the family has been abbreviated to two. Over the years, you know. We English do that sort of thing.” He was puzzled because Kathryn’s astonishment did not look like the happy kind.
“So Kit ‘Mallen’ is actually Kit M-a-l-l-o-w-a-n, and he owns Morgan Mallowan?” Kathryn had shut her eyes and was reciting this information dully, as though determined to know the full sum of the damage.
“Ah, yes. You don’t seem pleased.”
“I thought,” Kathryn replied carefully, ignoring the implied question, “that the Mallowan family were the Marquises of Wallwood.”
Harry was impressed that Kathryn knew how to pronounce the plural of “marquis” in English, but he corrected her again.
“Yes, except that the village is pronounced ‘Wallwood’ but the family title, though spelled the same way, is prounced ‘Wallud.’ And obviously Kit didn’t tell you, so I probably wasn’t supposed to, but nobody briefed me.” He sounded slightly cross.
Kathryn, in dire need of a place to sit down, looked around and saw a well-weathered bench placed to take advantage of the view. She went to it, sat, put her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands, and began to say the word “shit” over and over again, quietly and without emphasis, like a mantra.
Harry sat on the other end of the bench. “I expect Kit didn’t tell you because—well, he’s always complaining he can never be sure a woman’s not interested in him just for the title.”
Kathryn’s scatological mantra faded into silence. She sat up and sighed. “Well, he’s just found a woman who’s not interested in him precisely because of the title. And the house.” She gestured at it. “World’s most beautiful prison.”
“You Americans,” Harry declared, firmly, “are mad.”
Kathryn didn’t feel like discussing it, so she simply rose from the bench and headed back toward the car, saying, “Well, we might as well be on our way.”
It wasn’t until they were pulling up at a side door of the house (“Family entrance,” Harry said) that an inconsistency struck her.
“You said Kit’s car was in the shop.”
“Yes. Will was going to fetch you but there was some crisis on the home farm and I was summoned on short notice to fill in. I expect that was why I wasn’t properly briefed. About the title and such.”
“But what’s this rubbish about Kit’s car being out of whack? There must be a fleet of cars here!”
“Oh, of course. But Kit’s only had one of them altered.”
“Altered?”
“So he can drive it. He’s left all the others normal, so the rest of us can use them. He ought to have a spare— silly git. We keep telling him so.”
Kathryn was so busy digesting this that when Harry set the brake on the MG, she did not immediately make a move to get out of the car. He came around to her side to open the door for her, but she put up a hand to stop him and asked him if he would send Kit out to talk to her.
Harry, now convinced that she was seriously odd, did as she asked.
Kathryn sat still in the car, staring through the windshield but thinking too hard to notice what was in front of her eyes. Her mind had gone back to the encounter on the train. Will had stood in the doorway of their compartment to invite her to come back and join them. Even though it was Kit, surely, who was more interested in her. And Will had risen to tell her good-bye at Oxford. But Kit hadn’t. She had never seen him stand.
Chapter 17
MID JULY 1997
Two Weeks Before Rob Hillman’s Death
Derek was tracing invisible spirals with the tip of his finger on Crumpet’s incredible breasts: first the left breast, then the right; first a leisurely, ever increasing circle from the aureole outward and downward, then reversing direction, still slow, around and upward to the nipple, which he would greet with a gentle tap before moving his hand back to the other breast and starting the entire process over again.
The nipples weren’t responding with any particular
enthusiasm, since every cell in Crumpet’s body capable of sexual response was well and truly exhausted. Derek had seen to that.
Crumpet was easier after sex than most of the other women Derek had known. Other women wanted you to talk; they wanted endearments and compliments, some indication that what had gone before was something more than simply the gratification of animal urges. But Crumpet, never all that verbal in the first place, was satisfied if you merely maintained some languid physical homage to her fabulous form. This Derek was more than willing to do; it was a small recompense for the pleasures that had gone before.
For Crumpet was brilliant in the sack, that was certain. Too bad she had the intellect of a Barbie Doll and the morals of a harlot. Derek knew that nearly any man of his class, upbringing, and education, assuming he had ready access to several presentable females (who were not at all bad in bed), would have turned his nose up at Crumpet’s vulgar charms. Of course, if the bloke in question were unattached and even slightly randy, he would jump on Crumpet quick as a ferret; but then he would get up, zip his fly, and go looking for someone he wasn’t afraid to be seen in public with.
Derek had never, since puberty, been short of presentable women. He was good-looking—reasonably so or remarkably so, depending upon how any given woman responded to his dark, Mediterranean looks. He was also the only son and heir of a fabulously wealthy man, and for good measure there was also the “Sir.” It wasn’t his yet, of course, and as he was genuinely fond of his uncle Gregory he sincerely hoped it wouldn’t be his for a good many years to come. But ever since his cousin Jerry, Sir Gregory’s only child, had gotten himself stupidly killed along with Freddy Mallowan, Derek had been the heir to one of the oldest and crustiest baronetcies in the kingdom.
So there had always been girls. Some of them had been pretty bloody marvelous, too, and a few of them, Derek believed, had actually fancied him for himself rather than the money and the status.
But he had come nowhere near selecting the future Mrs. Banner, and meanwhile there was always Crumpet. It wasn’t simply that she had the sexiest body this side of a centerfold and that she was such an easy lay as to be a foregone conclusion; he actually enjoyed her blatant, tasteless presentation of herself. Perhaps it was the Italian in him; perhaps old Rufus Banner’s lively Neapolitan bride had bequeathed to her grandson some appreciation of unapologetic sensuality, of unembarrassed love of pleasure.
Derek’s hand (the one that had been appreciating Crumpet’s delicious bosom) slid down until it lay flat on her abdomen. Then he moved it back and forth in tiny rapid movements, rippling the flesh. Crumpet giggled and tried to slap his hand, but he snatched it back and she struck her own belly with a resounding whap.
“Oooo, yer a bastard, you are!” she squeaked.
“Just making sure you were awake, dearest Crumpet. Got anything new for me?”
He always waited until after they had sex before he asked. Before the sex she couldn’t think about anything else, and besides, Derek didn’t want her to get the notion that he was more interested in the information than he was in her.
“Well, if you must know, he’s found a fragment.”
“A what?”
“A fragment. That’s what he said. That’s a piece of something, isn’t it?”
“Indeed it is, my girl. Did he tell you by any chance what sort of a fragment? I mean, a fragment of what?”
“Some old book. Do books fall to bits, then, when they get old?
“If they’re not taken proper care of. What sort of a book, did he say?”
“Yeah, and I listened really good so I could tell you. Who’s a clever girl, then?”
“You are, my sweet,” Derek replied obligingly, and kissed her cheek. “So: a fragment from—?”
“A prayer book. BORE-ing! But he said it was valuable.”
“How valuable?”
“He wasn’t sure. So he was going to ask some old fart he knew in Oxford.”
Derek kissed her again and muttered a few appropriate inanities into her hair, but he was thinking about what she’d said. Rob Hillman left Datchworth every weekend to go back to his flat in Oxford. He was probably there now—if he wasn’t having tea with the old fart and picking his brains. Derek decided he’d better drive out to Datchworth on Monday evening to have supper with his uncle; by then there might be some more specific information to pick up.
The thought of his uncle brought a twinge of guilt. It sometimes felt like he was plotting against the old man, which of course he would never do. Not against him. Not really. It was all for the good of Datchworth, after all, and Derek knew that nothing was closer to Sir Gregory’s heart.
Of course Uncle Gregory held Brasenose in affection, and would enjoy doing something special for the college. Derek felt the same way. As did Meg, in all probability. The whole family has been Nosemen—Meg always said “Nosepeople,” but not seriously—for generations. Almost as long as the Mallowans.
But Uncle Gregory was getting most appallingly feeble, and although there was as yet no sign that the weakness in his body had crept into his brain, Derek worried that the old man’s judgment, when it came right down to it, might not be as levelheaded as it once would have been. Brasenose or Datchworth? Derek could not be dead certain that his uncle would make the right choice.
The problem was that Uncle Gregory seemed to think that Datchworth didn’t really need any money; after all, Derek was now the heir and he would bring with him the Banner millions. Derek, being a conservatively reared Englishman, could not bring himself to say to his uncle what he feared. True, John Banner was a lot older than Sir Gregory, and the Alzheimer’s made him seem older yet, but the brute fact was that Alzheimer’s wasted the brain, not the body, and his father, Derek reflected with mixed feelings, might last for another decade. Dear Uncle Gregory, alas, almost certainly would not.
And that would leave Derek in charge of an estate which was as financially precarious as most of the other ancient estates in the country, with no more Banner money to back him up than the sum his father had settled upon him on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday.
And so he had begun his little game. Crumpet had been easy to recruit, and appeared to be playing her part pretty well. So far it had been innocent enough. But the guilt still niggled at him.
Meanwhile, the gentleman whom Crumpet had stigmatized as an old fart, and who was in fact one of the most agreeable human beings ever to be made a full professor at Oxford, was literally rubbing his hands with delight.
“Oh, just look at you! Aren’t you a pretty little thing?”
Rob Hillman was not discomfited by these exclamations, as he knew they were addressed not to him but to the fragment of parchment he had brought for the professor to examine.
“Where’s my glass? I know it’s somewhere in the chaos here.” The professor began to rummage among the papers on his desk, but fortunately Rob spotted the magnifying glass protruding—just barely—from under a notebook on a nearby chair.
“Here you are, Professor.”
“What? Ah, brilliant! I should wear the bloody thing around my neck, shouldn’t I? Now let’s have a better look . . .” He bent over the illuminated capital.
He exclaimed, as Rob had earlier, over the angels holding up the cloud; he admired the color in the Virgin’s cheeks, and the intricacies of her lacy halo; he blessed the hand that had preserved her safe from Cromwell; he congratulated Mr. Hillman upon discovering her.
Rob, pleased that his offering had made a hit, sipped his tea and enjoyed the professor’s enjoyment; his former tutor’s unbridled enthusiasm for manuscripts had figured largely in Rob’s decision to specialize in paleography.
When the older man finally calmed down sufficiently to sit, he happily discussed with Rob the probable age and provenance of the fragment, and made suggestions regarding how it might best be preserved and displayed. He was also useful in answering one of Rob’s most important questions.
“For insurance purposes? I’d say
, oh—” he leaned closely over the brightly painted square, squinting through the magnifying glass. “Couple of thousand. The work’s pretty fine, though I’ve seen better, and so have you. But the angels holding the cloud, as you say . . . yes, a couple of thousand.”
At four-thirty Rob took his leave, thanking his former tutor and wishing him a good trip to Denmark, whither the professor was bound the following week. Passing through the outlandish decorative brick facades of Keeble, Rob emerged from the college and began to walk back toward the center of town. He was bound for the specialist framers to whom the professor had directed him; he could just make it before they closed, he thought. He would leave the parchment with them, and they could write to Sir Gregory with a quotation on the cost of having it mounted.
Rob looked forward to taking the tiny treasure, properly framed, back to Datchworth. Of course Sir Gregory had already seen it; Rob had shown it to him at supper the day he’d found it. But the person Rob really wanted to show it to was Kit. Kit had the near-blasphemous sense of humor that is the identifying mark of the well-educated high-church Anglican; Kit would appreciate those angels better than any of the Datchworth family. Rob would take the fragment over to Morgan Mallowan as soon as he could.
Rob had liked Kit from the moment they’d met at Sir Gregory’s dinner table. Kit’s intensity, his good humor, his command of the English language and his Jane Austen syntax, reminded Rob strongly of his cousin Kathryn.
Hey, there was an idea! Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Kit needed to meet a woman who was, as he himself put it, “impervious to both of the beasts.” Rob knew that Kit’s “Greater Beast”—the house and the title—would not tempt Kathryn. And the “Lesser Beast” would not deter her. Rob decided that when Kathryn came over to England in a couple of weeks, he really ought to introduce her to Kit.
Thieves Break In Page 15
