Thieves Break In

by Cristina Sumners

  Kathryn was, in fact, chilled to the bone. It hardly mattered whether or not the fantastic story was true. The matter-of-fact manner in which it was being related proved to her beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was in the presence of real madness. “That’s kind of you, but I must go back to my room and change now, so I shan’t be able to stay for sherry.”

  “No, Miss Koerney,” Clarissa said, and it was unmistakably an order. “I must talk to you about your cousin.”

  Kathryn hesitated. Was it possible Clarissa knew who had killed Rob? If I run away now, she wondered, will I ever find out? “What about my cousin?”

  “A pleasant young man,” Clarissa allowed judiciously. “Good manners, for an American. He told me about a great treasure he had found in the muniment room.”

  “That’s right. It is indeed a great treasure. I’ve seen it.”

  Clarissa regarded Kathryn thoughtfully for a moment. “He called it a fragment, as though it were a piece of a broken dish, yet he talked of Chaucer and a manuscript.”

  “That’s right, Lady Bebberidge-Thorpe. Chaucer never finished the Canterbury Tales, and what tales he did finish he never finally assembled into one whole. There is one tale of which we have only the beginning, about fifty lines. It is told by the Cook, one of the less respectable pilgrims, and it’s clear from those fifty lines that the story is going to be very vulgar. It is Chaucer, nevertheless, so the remainder of that story has been for some centuries rather like the lost mines of Solomon. That’s what Rob found in the muniment room: the “Cook’s Tale,” a fragment of the Canterbury Tales.”

  Clarissa actually looked pleased. She almost smiled. “It would be very valuable, then?”

  “Beyond valuable. Literally priceless.”

  Clarissa was nodding to herself as if immensely satisfied. “Excellent. That’s what he told me. It’s good to hear a second opinion that concurs.”

  “Lady Bebberidge-Thorpe, how did you come to have this conversation with Rob? Did he visit you here?”

  “Oh, no. No one visits me here. It gets intensely dull. That’s why I had Crumper arrange my escape hatch.”

  “Escape hatch?”

  “Yes. If I try to go out into the rest of the house, they threaten to send me away to a dreadful place where people are locked up in padded cells. But what they don’t realize is that I know this part of the Castle quite well. I memorized it as a girl. I always wanted this room, you see.”

  “It’s a lovely room,” Kathryn agreed, humoring her.

  “They gave it to my stupid older brother. He didn’t deserve it, couldn’t possibly appreciate it. But when he fell out the window and drowned in the moat, I assumed they would give it to me. I asked them to. But they boarded it up. They filled in the moat. I had to wait a long time to get this room.” Clarissa’s gaze went on a stately progress around the walls and windows.

  “Lady Bebberidge-Thorpe. You were going to tell me how you came to meet my cousin. Something about an escape hatch?”

  “Ah, yes. Crumper helped me with that; he’s very loyal. He managed to get Cunningham, the old estate manager, to authorize some alternations to my quarters. Cunningham didn’t know, of course, that I lived here, he had only been told that Crumper was in charge of this part of the Castle. But I knew every stone, as I told you, so with a little ingenuity . . . come, let me show you where I spoke with your cousin.”

  She rose gracefully and walked across the room to a dark wooden door. Kathryn, now afire with curiosity, followed her into a small vestibule containing two other doors.

  Clarissa gestured at the wider of the two. “I was given that room for a bedroom, and this—” here she opened the other door, “this was just a little space between the rooms. Gregory told me I could use it for storage. As if I had anything to store! But I knew something Gregory didn’t. Only a wooden wall stood between this space—it was here, you see—and this.”

  “This” was a windowless area from which arose a narrow wooden staircase.

  “It goes up to the old servants’ quarters on the top floor. I know what you’re thinking. It’s not really suitable for a person of my station, is it? But it serves the purpose.”

  Kathryn walked over to the foot of the steps and looked up. She was in the bottom of a tall stairwell. In the dim light, it was hard to tell, but she thought it went up five flights, possibly more.

  “At the top,” said Clarissa, “I had the workmen alter a window. From the outside, it looks like all the other windows, so anyone walking along the parapet would never know. But from the inside it opens like a door.”

  Kathryn said softly, “You met my cousin on the roof.”

  “Yes, it was most fortunate. Shall we go up?”

  Kathryn shivered. “I—I’m afraid I can’t. I—I’m afraid of heights, you see. And I’m getting quite cold now. I really must go back to my—”

  No! Kathryn thought. This cannot really be happening.

  Clarissa had lifted her right hand, and in it was a small pistol.

  Tom was looking for Kathryn again, and cursing Datchworth for its size. “How the hell could you live in a place liked this?” he muttered to himself as he left the wing where the double-viewed parlor and their bedrooms were. She hadn’t been there. “You’d need walkie-talkies to find anybody. Or something higher tech. Computer, tell me the location of Kathryn Koerney. Kathryn Koerney has eloped with a rich redheaded Englishman. Computer, tell me the penalty for doing away with a rich redheaded—”

  Since he had reached the foot of the entrance hall staircase only to come face-to-face with the redhead in question, he was grateful that he hadn’t been muttering too loudly.

  “Tom!” Kit cried thankfully. “I’ve been looking all over for Kathryn. Where is she?”

  “You tell me and we’ll both know. She was in the muniment room a while—oh, Crump!”

  Crumper had entered the hall from a corridor Tom had not yet set foot in. He looked worried. “Tom! I’ve been looking for you. My lord,” he added with a small bow to Kit, “forgive me. I did not immediately see you.” He turned back to Tom. “Did Kathryn ever find you?”

  “She was looking for me?”

  “Yes. I see she was unsuccessful.”

  “Crumper,” said Kit, “what are you so worried about? Where is Kathryn?”

  “I’m afraid, my lord, based on what Mary has just told me about something my father said, that Kathryn is with Mrs. Banner.”

  Kit, incredulous, exclaimed, “In Hampshire?”

  But Crumper didn’t hear him because Tom had grabbed his arm and was shouting, “For God’s sake, where are they? Clarissa Banner is the one who murdered Rob Hillman!”

  Crumper absorbed this information in a millisecond. Then he turned and ran back toward the hallway he’d come from, shouting something Tom couldn’t make out. Tom, in hot pursuit, became aware that he had company. Kit’s wheelchair, propelled by arms moving almost too fast for the eye to see, was flying down the corridor trying to pass him on the right.

  One percent of Tom’s brain was thinking, Shit, I can’t even outrun the bastard, while the other ninety-nine percent was fighting over whether to be very afraid or to protest reasonably, What possible reason could Clarissa have to harm Kathryn?

  Kathryn, carefully climbing the creaky stairs with Clarissa in her wake, had arrived at the same question.

  Given the choice of being shot in the dim privacy of Clarissa’s secret staircase or obeying her order to ascend to the roof, Kathryn had opted for the roof. With any luck, she thought, there’ll be a cop up there. Failing that, she had reasoned, the time it would take to get to the parapet would at least provide opportunity to think. She was thinking with all her might.

  Her thought processes were either hampered or heightened, she wasn’t sure which, by the deafening thumps of her heart and the quivering weakness in her legs that made the stairs seem like Everest. She had instinctively put her hand on the banister, but it had moved under her touch and she had decided not to trust
it.

  “Lady Bebberidge-Thorpe,” she said in what she hoped was a calm and courteous voice. “I do not understand why you are threatening me in this way. I am not at all a threat to you.”

  “Heavens, girl, you really are slow, aren’t you? I need that manuscript, that fragment, for myself. Your cousin told me there was some plan to give it to Gregory’s college at Oxford. That sounds like Gregory. Foolish beyond permission. But your cousin also told me that Gregory didn’t know about the fragment yet, no one did. Are all Americans stupid?”

  “I admit that many of us are,” Kathryn replied, cravenly flattering the woman’s egomania. “But there’s no reason to, um, silence me. Everybody knows about the fragment now. It’s no longer a secret. I told the police all about it.”

  “You would, of course, say that. Keep moving.”

  Kathryn had halted for a moment, stunned by Clarissa’s easy dismissal of the truth. It was at that instant that fear turned to dread. This crazy woman was dead serious. And she, Kathryn, was about to be dead, period, like Rob, if she didn’t try something more drastic than persuasion. A favorite phrase of her father’s floated through her mind: Never waste your time trying to reason with unreasonable people. Time. She was wasting time.

  What were her advantages and how could she use them? She realized at once that she had, at that moment, a classic advantage for combat. She was higher than her enemy. Also heavier and stronger. She would knock Clarissa down the stairs. She would turn suddenly and— No. Turning would take too much time, and she might lose her balance. She would remain facing forward and kick back with one leg. She thought she was close enough. She needed something to help maintain her balance. The banister was no good. The stairs. The stairs themselves. She would start a sentence to make the attack more unexpected; she would pitch forward and grasp the step three—no, four—steps higher than the one she was on at the time, and kick back with her right leg as strongly as she could. That would at least throw Clarissa off balance, and leave her vulnerable to a full frontal attack.

  Do it now, Koerney, she told herself, before you get paralyzed by the absurdity of the situation, before you start thinking it can’t really be this bad, just behave reasonably and it will all go—

  Forgetting to start a sentence, she threw her hands down to the fourth step above her feet and simultaneously lashed back with her right leg. Her foot met only thin air, however, and the force of the movement rolled her over so that her left leg folded under her and she sat down with a thump facing Clarissa. Clarissa had thrown herself toward the wall to avoid the blow, and instantly backed down three steps. She held the gun up and regarded Kathryn with a narrow eye.

  “I wonder if I have underestimated you,” she mused.

  Kathryn was thinking it was she who had underestimated Clarissa. She was sure of it when Clarissa continued.

  “Perhaps I had better warn you, Miss Koerney, in case you decide that this gun is too small to do you any serious damage. My intention is to aim for your face and fire repeatedly. I believe I can hit you at least three times. Even if the bullets don’t kill you, they should cause sufficient brain damage to render you incapable of remembering who Chaucer was, much less of reading his work.” There was a brief pause. Then she spoke again: “Move.”

  Kathryn moved. She got to her feet, turned, and once again began to climb the stairs. She began to wonder if she shouldn’t devote some part of her brain to the business of confessing her sins.

  Fortunately for Kit, the route from the entrance hall to the Round Room was all on the same level; with no steps to impede him, he arrived neck and neck with Tom. Crumper was banging on a heavy old door and simultaneously rattling the doorknob. “Mrs. Banner! Dad!” he shouted, to no effect. He was explaining breathlessly to Tom and Kit at the same time that he had tried before and gotten no answer. “I don’t have a key to this door, only my father does—Mrs. Banner! Dad!”

  Tom was looking at the door, thinking in despair that they would need a battering ram to break it down.

  “Jimmy!” cried a reproachful voice behind them. “What are you—?”

  “Dad, thank God! Quick, open the door!”

  Before Old Crumper said a word, it was clear he did not plan to comply. He was putting on his dignity as if it were a cloak, and he was starting to fold his arms. Before he could do so, however, his lapels were grasped and pulled forward and down so suddenly he could hear them tear. He was face-to-face with Aristocracy, and it said, in the voice of seven marquises put together, “You—will—open—that—door.”

  “Yes, my lord! At once, my lord! Here is the key—”

  The key was wrested from the old man’s grasp by his own son, who opened the door in less than a second; Crumper and Tom tumbled into the room, Kit almost rolling over them; Kit and Tom were shouting Kathryn’s name. The Round Room was empty. Tom turned to Crumper, crying, “Go, Crump, get Griffin or any cop you can find!” Crumper was back out the door almost before Tom had finished his sentence. Kit had sped across the Round Room to the only other door, which was standing open, and swore furiously when the arms of his chair clanged against the stone doorposts. He couldn’t get through it. Instantly he spun his wheels back to get out of Tom’s way. Tom pelted through the opening, looked right toward a small doorway that opened onto a closet, and wrenched open the door to the left. He swept the bedroom with a glance, found the smaller door that logic said should be there, and ran to it. There was no one in the bathroom, either. Even as he ducked to look under the bed he called to Kit, “She’s not here!”

  “Over here, Tom!” Kit was pointing toward the place that looked like a closet. “There’s light through there!”

  Tom came, gasping for breath now and cursing himself for being overweight and unfit. Kit was right; the back of the closet gave way to a stairwell. Tom looked up, saw no movement, started to shout Kathryn’s name again but decided to save his breath, and launched himself at the stairs.

  He grabbed at the banister to assist his legs and lungs; with a loud crack it broke; he fell backward down the few steps he had already climbed and hit the back of his head against the stone floor.

  Kit heard the cry, the fall, and the silence. “Tom!” he shouted. “TOM!”

  Nothing.

  Kit put his hands on the arms of his chair, put his weight on his hands, and with a mighty push flung himself forward onto the floor. He began to walk on his hands, balancing his torso and dragging his useless legs behind him. He got to the stairwell, saw Tom stretched out motionless, and said, “Oh, Jesus.” Praying that Tom was merely unconscious, he struggled past him and reached the stairs.

  If the banister had been solid, he could have swarmed up it like a monkey, but having witnessed Tom’s fate, he dared not try it. He put his hands on the steps and straightened his arms. Step by step he pulled himself up the stairway, walking on his hands. The muscles in his arms were screaming by the time he reached the second landing, but he stopped only to take off his belt and cast it aside; the buckle was catching on some of the steps and slowing him down. His progress was excruciatingly slow anyway; it was taking him forever; if Kathryn was in danger, he would never get there in time. But he labored on, sweating, straining, weeping, cursing, and praying harder than he had ever prayed in his life.

  On the top floor both Clarissa and Kathryn had heard the shouting. But then it had stopped.

  Clarissa said mildly, “I suppose that was intended to be a rescue party, but apparently it has gone off in another direction.”

  Kathryn had come to the same conclusion, and was now suffering the ghastly feeling that comes to a frightened person whose hopes have been raised only to be dashed.

  They were in the old servants’ quarters now, moving down a dark hallway punctuated by dim rectangles of light, open doorways into now abandoned rooms. Kathryn moved her eyes right and left without moving her head, desperately hoping to spot an escape route, but as far as she could see all the rooms were just that: rooms. Dead ends. There would be no poin
t in ducking into one of them; Clarissa would have her cornered.

  Kathryn had commended her soul, her mother, and several friends into the keeping of God. She had bundled all her sins into one three-word confession that said it all: “Lord, thou knowest.” She had used it before when she felt overwhelmed; it was the only time she used sixteenth-century language in private prayer.

  Having prepared for the worst-case scenario, she now, quite sensibly, had turned both her mind and her prayers back to an attempt at a happier ending.

  I am dressed both for fight and for flight and she is dressed for neither. The gun is small. It will hold either six or eight bullets, but it may not be full. Assume it’s full. Assume there are eight. That would be enough to kill me, certainly, but only if they were well aimed. She’s right about three bullets to my face. So I won’t show her my face. And I shall get the back of my head as far away from her as possible, the minute I see a place where I can dodge around a corner and make her waste a few shots. And possibly pick up something to waylay her with when she comes around the corner after me. Damn this efficient household, these rooms are completely bare. Not so much as a curtain rod. I’d settle for a doorstop. Maybe I should make a run for it now. Down this hall and into the last room. There won’t be anything there I can use for a weapon, but then, there’s not likely to be anything on the roof either. Maybe I should go for it before I get to the roof.

  But suddenly the choice was no longer open to her. “The door on your left, please,” said Clarissa. Kathryn obediently went through the door. As in the other rooms they had passed, the windows were narrow rectangles set under low eaves. As Kathryn entered, however, she saw that below one window a short flight of wooden steps had been built. Clarissa’s escape hatch. Kathryn walked over to the steps, stopped, turned, and with a polite gesture said, “Ladies first.”

  Clarissa, like Victoria, was not amused. Neither was she offended, however; she simply said, “No,” and indicated with an economical movement of the gun that Kathryn was to proceed. Kathryn ascended the steps and opened the window door. Ducking a bit to avoid hitting her head, she stepped out onto the parapet, turned to her right, and immediately broke into a run.