The Camelot Caper, page 13
The books were about what one might expect 188 / Elizabeth Peters
to find on sale for a shilling. Though the shop assistant appeared to be asleep at his desk, Jess soon became self-conscious and began reading one of the books, which she selected more or less at random, just to be doing something. A red-backed volume called In Darkest India, it was not a travel book, as she had thought, but a very lurid novel. By page 54 she was deeply engrossed in the activities of Lady Valerie and Captain Smythe-Wilkins.
Lady Valerie was being pursued around a harem by a lustful rajah who had kidnaped her (Jess’s inner mind inqured, Harem? Rajah?—and was promptly shushed).
His hot breath was on Lady Valerie’s face when a hand fell on Jessica’s shoulder. She clutched the book to her bosom with a good imitation of Lady Valerie’s terrified gasp.
“It’s a good thing I was watching,” David said mendaciously. “Why didn’t you call me when they arrived?”
“Did they?”
“They must have come,” David pointed out, with irreproachable logic, “because there they go.”
“Oh. Both of them.”
“Yes. Shall we?”
“Wait a minute.” Jess fumbled in her purse THE CAMELOT CAPER / 189
and approached the desk. It seemed a shame to waken the clerk, so she left the shilling by his hand.
“You didn’t have to buy that.”
“I want to find out whether Captain Smythe-Wilkins will arrive in time.”
“In time for what?”
“Never mind, they’re turning the corner. Let’s hurry.”
They went down upper Church Street to Brock Street and around the Circus to Gay Street. On Milsom Street David had to take Jess firmly by the arm; she had come to a dead halt in front of a shop which might have been patronized by the immortal Jane herself. David’s remarks on this occasion were pungent, and Jess forced herself to pay more attention to the quarry.
The villains were strolling, just like the tourists they always tried to ape. Jess was getting to know Cousin John’s back quite well. Today he wore a dark-gray suit of irreproachable cut; he was bareheaded, and she felt sure that the brown locks were dyed, or tinted. His companion was half a head taller, but he slouched badly and his trousers were out of press. The crease in Cousin John’s looked like a knife edge.
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“They’re heading for the Abbey,” David muttered.
“Damn.”
“Why? I’d love to see the Abbey.”
“I’m getting very tired of fiascoes in and around churches.”
“You can’t blame the churches for the fiascoes. But it is odd, the way they stick to the tourist places.”
For a change, their destination was not Bath Abbey, which Jess would have called cathedral if she hadn’t dipped into her guidebook. Its lovely facade faced onto one of the most charming paved courtyards Jess had yet seen; the opposite side was an arcade opening onto a busy street, and the two long sides of the yard were lined with buildings out of the early nineteenth century.
It was one of the tourist centers of town; both the ruins of the Roman baths and the famous Pump Room, as well as the Abbey, could be reached from the courtyard. The two familiar, dissimilar figures crossed the court and disappeared into the entrance of the Pump Room.
Later Jess realized that one reason why the adversar-ies had selected this spot was because they knew it would throw her, at least, completely off guard. Apart from its historic and literary associations, it was a beautiful room, long
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and high, with a unique curved balcony at one end.
The walls were tinted pale green, picked out with gold moldings on the capitals and pilasters between the high windows. There were red brocade drapes to match the red-figured carpet, and a huge crystal chandelier.
The room was filled with little tables at which people were having tea, and a string trio played in the alcove under the balcony. A glass-enclosed bay on the side away from the windows held a complicated object which Jess recognized as the waters themselves, bubbling up in a many-spouted fountain.
David stopped in the doorway, his face a mixture of amusement and disbelief, his eyes intent on a table near the crimson-draped windows.
“Of all the gall!”
“They’re having tea,” Jess said. “What’s so wicked about that?”
“For twopence I’d join them.” David muttered; and then gulped. Cousin John had seen them. A smile of pleasure widened his mouth; he lifted one arm and waved vigorously.
David turned and looked around. There was a constant flow of tourists, in and out, but no one had responded to the greeting.
“He means us,” Jess said. Cousin John’s wave 192 / Elizabeth Peters
had turned into a beckoning gesture. He was nodding and beaming, and smirking and smiling as if he had just spotted two long-lost, rich relatives. “No—David!
You can’t—”
“Why not?” David’s jaw squared in an expression that was oddly familiar. Jess identified it; the jaw of the hero of his most recent book, which she had per-used during the leisurely day in Glastonbury, had been wont to square itself in just such a fashion.
“Why not?” she repeated indignantly. “Timeo Danaos…uh…” Even if her scanty high-school Latin hadn’t failed, David probably would have paid no attention to the admirable warning conveyed in the quotation. He was already threading his way among the tables, and she followed, laden with foreboding.
Both men made the gesture of rising as she approached the table; but Algernon barely lifted his posterior from the chair, while Cousin John bounded airily to his feet and gave her a little bow.
“Marvelous to see you,” he exclaimed, pumping David’s limp hand. “We were so afraid you’d be delayed. Where are you staying? Not the Regent, we were sorry to find; it’s a delightful little place, you should have stopped there.”
The waitress arrived in the midst of this effu THE CAMELOT CAPER / 193
sion and took Cousin John’s order for another set of teas. He seated Jess with a flourish, and insisted that she take his cup. Algernon slid his cup toward David, who vigorously declined. His wary look brought a slight, unpleasant smile to Algernon’s face. He took his cup back without comment and drank, long and ostentatiously.
Cousin John continued to burble, Algernon scowled, and David sat with his arms folded, trying to look menacing. Jess shrugged mentally and drank her tea.
It was excellent tea.
David listened for five minutes to Cousin John’s commentary on the beauties of Bath. During this time he consumed one eclair, one nut bun, and a sandwich.
Fortified, he finally interrupted.
“Look here, it’s time we had a showdown.”
“I do admire your grasp of American slang,” murmured Cousin John.
“Never mind that. What do you two want?”
The waitress arrived with the second order, and David assuaged his frustration with a second bun. He always ate in gulps; now, being quite angry, he barely chewed.
“I’d like a straight answer. Why are you following this lady?”
“Following her?” Cousin John thoughtfully sipped his tea. He put his cup in the saucer and 194 / Elizabeth Peters
smiled disarmingly at David. “Dear boy, I had the opposite impression. Isn’t she following us?”
“Who hit whom over whose head?” Jess demanded angrily. “Who dragged whom into whose car? Who tied who up—”
That doesn’t come out quiet right,” Cousin John said critically. “Who tied up whom would perhaps—”
“Oh, stop talking like that! What do you want with me? It’s possible, you know, that if you told me we might be able to make a deal.” Meeting the fixed, black stare of the second man, she added, “And why doesn’t he ever talk?”
“Let’s go,” said Algernon, rising, as if on cue.
“There, you see? You’ve hurt his feelings,” said Cousin John sadly. “I’m afraid there’s no use trying to talk to him now.”
“Wait a second,” David said thickly, through a sandwich. “You can’t just—”
“I’ll try to persuade him,” Cousin John promised.
“Perhaps in a day or two…But he’s frightfully sensitive.
Don’t fret, we’ll be in touch.”
“Sit down.” Jess caught David’s sleeve. “It’s no use, we can’t chase them through the Pump Room. We haven’t even paid for the tea!”
“Damnation.” David subsided, blinking. “I’m so angry I’m weak in the knees.”
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“I know, he is maddening, isn’t he? David, what was the point of all that?”
“Not to convey and information, certainly.”
“Searching our rooms again?”
“That must be dull for them; they’ve done it so often.”
“The car?”
“Not again, thank you. Why do you think I chose that hotel? It has its own garage, and I tipped the at-tendant specifically.”
He yawned. “Too much food. It’s made me sleepy.”
“Let’s go back to the hotel. I don’t know why, but—I’m uneasy.”
“I know why.” David smothered another yawn.
“Whenever Cousin John is on the prowl I’m uneasy.
On general principles.”
They got as far as the courtyard before he collapsed.
At first Jess thought he had stumbled, though the manner of his fall was not characteristic; he folded up like a stacked deck of cards which someone had prod-ded with a forefinger. When he failed to rise, she dropped down beside him and took his face between urgent hands. He blinked up at her like a placid owl.
“What’s wrong, David?”
“Nothin’ wrong. Sleepy.”
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“Get up. Please!”
“Sleepy,” David murmured. “Li’l nap…”
“Not here! David…”
A small crowd had collected, and one helpful bystander went in search of a doctor. David’s eyes were shut, but his face wore a gentle smile and he was snoring. When the doctor arrived, he needed only one look under David’s heavy eyelids.
“A barbiturate of some sort. Is the young man in the habit of taking sleeping medicine?”
“No, never. I can’t imagine…”
“Hmmm. Well, I don’t think he’s had enough to be in danger, but we’ll just make certain.” The doctor rose, fastidiously dusting his knees. “Can two of you gentlemen carry him? My office is just there.”
Jess stayed in the outer office while the doctor made certain; from the sounds which issued from the inner sanctum she was glad she was not present. Eventually a green-faced, swaying David emerged, supported by the doctor and his nurse.
“Shouldn’t he go to the hospital?” Jess gasped.
“No, he’ll do quite well now. Light diet, plenty of coffee, then let him sleep off the remnants.
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and you, young man, be more careful in future.”
David’s bleary eyes focused in a glare of such malevolence that the nurse almost dropped him.
“Don’t worry. I shall.”
“No,” Jess said for the third time, “I will not go around to their hotel. What do you expect me to do, challenge them to a duel?”
David sighed. Propped up on pillows, in the cold formality of the hotel room, he looked sad and misun-derstood. Secretly Jess was relieved that he had recovered enough to be resentful. She had spent the night in his room, curled up in a chair; she had done nothing, really, except listen to his placid snores, but she had been afraid to leave him alone and helpless.
“I suppose,” she said thoughtfully, “that the dope was in the tea.”
“I think not.” David looked sheepish. “I didn’t give them a chance at my tea, if you recall. But—well—now that I look back, some of the nuts in that bun had a bitter taste.”
“If you didn’t gulp your food—”
“Let’s not indulge in recriminations.” David hoisted himself higher on the pillows. “Is there more coffee?
Jess, I’ve been doing some thinking. There is something very odd about this.”
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“I’m glad you finally noticed.” Jess poured the coffee.
“No, I mean about the last few days. It’s degenerated into pure farce, Jess, this whole pursuit. From here to there and back again. All around the mulberry bush.
We’ve been asking ourselves what the point of these incidents could be. Now what precisely have they succeeded in doing for the last three or four days?”
“Messing up your car,” said Jess literally. “Drugging you. Getting us all went and muddy crawling around in the grass. Stealing my—”
“Yes, but what does it all add up to? What, generally, have we been doing?”
“Wasting an awful lot of time,” Jess said grumpily.
“In—”
She stopped, staring, as the sense of what she had said finally penetrated. David nodded.
“Precisely. Do you suppose that, if the ring were really their goal, they couldn’t have had it by now?
That nasty-looking character we call Algernon has kept conspicuously out of our way. I hate to admit it, but if that lad wanted to put me out of commission he could do it with one hand.”
“You mean it’s not the ring they’re after?”
“They may want the ring, but they want something else more. Delay and distraction, THE CAMELOT CAPER / 199
that’s what they want. What is it they want to distract us from? What are they trying to keep us from doing?”
“There’s only one possible answer,” Jess said slowly.
“It should have dawned on me before. From the moment I got off the boat they’ve been trying to head me off. There’s only one place—”
“Cornwall,” David finished. “And your loving grandparent.”
“Then—then he isn’t one of the villains.”
“It’s beginning to look that way. Another piece of the puzzle makes sense here, too. You said he asked you to come to see him—‘before he died,’ or words to that effect. Is he dying? Or seriously ill?”
“Why…I don’t know. I thought it was a sort of general, sentimental appeal; he’s very old.”
“It might have been an attack, or illness, a specific threat, that caused him to write to you For all you know, he could be breathing his last at this moment.”
“I suppose he could. But—”
“But me no buts.” David flung the bedclothes back.
“Hurry and pack. We’re leaving for Cornwall as fast as we can go.”
The road to Cornwall—or rather the first part of it—lay clear and straight ahead. David was 200 / Elizabeth Peters
driving a good deal faster than he should, and audibly crowing over his cleverness in eluding the enemy. Jess hunched over the road map, muttering.
“We have to go through Glastonbury. Maybe we’ll have time for another visit to—”
“Don’t be a mutt.” David overtook and passed a Volkswagen. “We are heading for—where is this house, anyhow?”
“Cornwall.”
“Cornwall is a good-sized place. Where in Cornwall?”
“Near St. Ives. I remember that because of the nurs-ery rhyme.”
“It would be; that’s way down near the end of the peninsula. Never mind, we’ll do it nonstop, and you can forget about the sights. You are the absolute limit.”
“One thing about Cousin John,” Jess said nastily.
“He did show me lots of nice places.”
“And you know why.”
“I don’t care why. At least I’ll have seen something of England before I die. Which—ow, look out!—which may be quite soon. I expect to be killed in an automobile accident.”
David indicated offense by scowling and sticking out his jaw. They drove on for a while in silence, while Jess admired the peaceful mead THE CAMELOT CAPER / 201
ows occupied by grazing sheep, and the clouds of apple trees in full blossom.
She was roused from her reverie by the intensity of David’s curses; he had gotten stuck behind a procession of trucks, which were proceeding at a placid thirty miles per hour.
“Why the hurry?” she asked lazily. “We saw them go tearing out of Bath in the opposite direction.”
David brightened.
“Yes, we were rather clever about that. Lurking conspicuously outside their hotel until they left, so that they would think we were going to follow them. I wonder where in Hades they were taking us this time?
Gloucester? Oxford? Scotland?”
“I myself wonder how long it will take them to find that we aren’t following them.”
David’s grin disappeared.
“There is that.”
“And you shouldn’t have stopped for gas at that town,” Jess went on. Fast driving made her nervous, and when she was nervous she became critical. “Rad-stock, that was the name of it. Once they know our general direction they’ll be able to guess where we’re going.”
The trucks had turned off onto a construction site; David increased his speed until the wind 202 / Elizabeth Peters
lashed Jess’s hair about her face. His own face was as long as that of the ruminating sheep that had stared, amazed, over the fence as they roared by.
“Jess, take another look at that map. Is there a smaller road out of Wells, that doesn’t go through Glastonbury?”
“There’s a little thin line,” Jess reported, after a while.
“To a town called Burnham.”
“I know those little thin lines,” David said pessimistically. “Hell. I haven’t been this far west in years. I suppose we’d best stay on main roads; until we reach Taunton, or Bridgwater, we’re more or less limited unless we go considerably out of our way. Cornwall itself is a maze; we can lose ourselves there.”
He pulled out on a blind curve, as if any more delay would be intolerable; Jess covered her face with her hands and did not uncover it until the violent swerve of the car told her that they were back in their proper lane.
“Might be wise to disguise ourselves,” David said, cheered by his narrow escape from annihilation. “How do you think I’d look in a beard?”
