The Camelot Caper, page 15
“Not at all. Silly to cling to these old customs, but…”
He shrugged. “One does. Wouldn’t want the neighbors to think we were lacking in respect.”
David, his hand on the drapes, turned slowly. Jess knew, even before she asked the question, what the response would be.
“Respect for what?”
Cousin John’s big blue eyes widened.
“Why,” he said gently, “for the dead.”
As soon as he had left the room, Jess and David flew together like metal onto a magnet. They stood hissing into one another’s faces, like characters out of a televi-sion serial.
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“It’s him, all right.”
“It certainly is he.”
Jess ignored the snub.
“And he’s dead!”
“Not the same he, I see. But equally correct.”
“Now what do we do?”
“Where did you hide the ring?”
“I’m certainly not going to tell you here.”
“For God’s sake, do you think he’s got the room bugged?”
“For all I know, he can hear through walls.”
“He looks it,” David agreed gloomily.
“Why did you tell them we’re engaged?”
“Can’t you stick to one subject?”
“No. I’m awfully confused. Why did you?”
“We’ve got to have a talk. The plot is so thick it feels like treacle.”
“You don’t think they killed him?”
“Who? Oh, I shouldn’t think so.”
“Why did you tell them we’re engaged?”
“To keep him from tossing me out of here, you idiot.
Why did you think?”
The were glaring at each other, faces only inches apart, when Cousin John returned, on little cat feet.
Jess jumped when he said gaily, “I do hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Not at all,” David said, lowering the hands which had been hovering near Jess’s throat.
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“Good, good.” Cousin John gave them a look of bright-eyed malice. “If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought you were having a jolly little lovers’ quarrel.
Shows how things can be misinterpreted…. Jessie, I know it’s a bit early for stimulants, but I thought you could do with some sherry. You didn’t know the dear old man, of course, but still, you looked a bit shocked.”
Physically Cousin John might not be a formidable opponent, but verbally he was an adversary to be reckoned with, a D’Artagnan of the mot juste. Jess didn’t even try to counter the most recent thrusts.
She had taken a seat with her back to the door, and now she learned where her cousin had inherited his silent walk. She did not see the new arrival until after the rising of the two men told her that someone else had entered the room.
“Well, Mother, here she is at last,” said Cousin John.
“A bit late, but…”
“Aunt—Guinevere,” Jess said. The name did not come easily to her lips.
It was clear that her aunt did not mean to give her even the formal cheek-rubbing embrace appropriate to relatives. She shook hands, firmly but without warmth, and nodded brusquely at David. Then she sat down, accepted a glass of
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sherry, and stared at Jess, who returned the look with interest.
At first she thought that the reason why her aunt’s face looked hauntingly familiar was because of a family resemblance; but as she inspected the hard features she found no trace of her father, or of Cousin John, who resembled his uncle more than he did any other relative. Aunt Guinevere had once been a handsome woman, but she had never been pretty; her good looks were masculine, the prominence of her features being accentuated by gray-streaked hair pulled back from her face and twisted into a bun on her neck. She wore a dark, simply cut dress. A stranger might easily have mistaken her for the housekeeper, and it was this word that gave Jess the clue. Aunt Guinevere looked just like the wicked housekeepers in half the Gothic novels Jess had read. From David’s fascinated stare, she gathered that he felt the same.
She scowled at him, and he closed his mouth with a snap and took a sip of sherry. His expression changed, and he looked at the amber liquid with respect.
“Marvelous stuff, isn’t it,” Cousin John said. “The old gentleman was a connoisseur. Unfortunately.
That’s where a good half of his income went, on wine.
The other half was devoted to THE CAMELOT CAPER / 223
his digging. So you see, old man, if you’re marrying Jessie for her money you’re going to be sadly deceived.”
David’s eyes brightened, and he returned a counter-thrust.
“That is a blow. Sorry, darling, but I’ll have to return your ring.”
“Ring?” said Cousin John involuntarily.
“Yes, rather a sentimental touch, I thought. Old family heirloom.” David divided a smile impartially among the audience. Aunt Guinevere didn’t turn a hair and Cousin John, game to the core, recovered himself.
“Jessie, dear, you haven’t given away Grandpapa’s ring? I suspect, you know, that he had other plans for it.”
“What, for instance?” David asked.
“Oh, well.” Cousin John looked vague. “One would have to wait for the reading of the will, wouldn’t one?
Do take good care of it, David. Just in case Grandfather had some last dying wish….”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve come near losing it several times,” David said casually. “Someone else seems to want it.”
He sat back, and tried to raise one eyebrow. Both of them went up. Cousin John, scarcely bothering to conceal his amusement, raised his 224 / Elizabeth Peters
eyebrow. It slid up as if it had been oiled, while the other brow remained motionless.
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Oddly enough, the chap who twice tried to steal it looked amazingly like you.”
This bombshell fell flat on the ground and failed to explode.
“Fascinating, these chance resemblances,” said Cousin John.
Aunt Guinevere stirred and spoke.
“Johnny has barely left the house this past week,”
she intoned. “So concerned about his grandfather, the dear boy…”
Jess stood against the door of the tower room. Her back was pressed against the wooden panels, and her palms were damp with perspiration.
“All it needs is a few more cobwebs,” she said aloud, and let out a stifled shriek as the door moved.
It opened despite her efforts and David’s head appeared. He stepped in and closed the door.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Jess said, recovering herself.
“The proprieties, you know.”
“Yes, I observed that they’ve put me at the opposite end of the house. However, I doubt that it’s the proprieties that they’re thinking of.”
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David gave the gaunt, shabby room a comprehensive survey and let out a soft whistle.
“Cousin John must have worked hard to get this effect.”
“It’s got hangings,” Jess said, gesturing toward the bed. “There must be armies of spiders in there!”
“That would be Aunt Guinevere’s contribution.
Probably spent all of yesterday catching them. I can see her now, leaping through the tall grasses, her spider net outstretched…”
“You’re beginning to sound like Cousin John.”
“I know. Damn the fellow.”
“David, I really do want to get out of this place.”
David walked gingerly across the floor to the window. In a different room it might have been a charming window; it was curved, to fit the shape of the wall, and under it was a deep window seat. But it was cur-tainless, and the panes were cracked, and when David put his knee on the cushions of the seat a cloud of dust billowed up from the faded chintz.
“Awk,” he remarked, coughing. “Jess, don’t do any star-gazing, will you?”
Jess joined him at the window. She knew why he had trodden lightly; the floorboards were 226 / Elizabeth Peters
quite solid, but somehow they managed to look as if they might collapse at the slightest pressure. She looked out the window, and straight on down, down without a break to the hard flagstones of a weedy terrace sixty feet below.
“David,” she repeated. “I really do want—”
“I sympathize. But in all decency you can’t leave before the funeral, and I expect you’ll have to be present when the will is read. If we don’t get a clue from that, and from what I can worm out of Cousin John—”
“What about his little alibi?”
“Balderdash. Aunt Guinevere’s one of those doting mums who’d alibi him if he’d murdered eight little maidens and heaved them off the cliff into the sea.”
“Six little maidens.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“‘Six little maidens you’ve drown-ded here, go keep them co-om-pany,’” Jess sang.
“Oh. So that’s what I was thinking of. Wonder why.”
“Because he’s just that type.” Jess sat down on the dusty cushions, fascinated by this new discovery. “‘Take off, take off your golden gown, take off your gown,’
said he; ‘for though I am going to murder you, I could not spoil your fi-i-nery.’ That’s very clever of you, David.”
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“You have the most splendidly undisciplined mind.”
David sat down next to her. “Can’t you concentrate on anything? I mean, the character of the villain is doubtless of interest, but—”
“I forget what we were talking about,” said Jess.
“So do I,” said David softly; and for the next few minutes there was no sound in the room except for muffled, hard breathing. Neither of them heard the soft tap on the door, and neither of them saw it open; the newcomer had to cough several times before they sprang apart.
“Sorry again,” said Cousin John. “Frightful of me to keep interrupting…” His voice and his raised eyebrow implied volumes of unexpurgated material. “Thought you might like a stroll before dinner. Ancestral acres, and all that rot…I keep forgetting you two are engaged!
So stupid of me!”
Dazzled as she was, Jess couldn’t help being amused at David’s expression. Caught off guard, and not quite in his normal senses, he couldn’t have carried on a conversation about the weather, much less dealt with Cousin John. So she said demurely, “Well, it’s new to us too. But we’d love to see the ancestral acres.
Wouldn’t we, darling?”
Jess had found the front of the house depress 228 / Elizabeth Peters
ing, but the back regions verged on tragedy. What had once been a set of gardens, kitchen and flower, and a group of neat outbuildings, were now ruins overgrown with weeds. The stables had been converted, though not very well, into garages. One of the doors was not only closed but locked, with a new shiny padlock.
They fought their way through a small plantation of trees and found themselves on the cliff edge. The view was glorious. The sun was dipping below the flat horizon, whose pearly waterline blended almost impercept-ibly into the flat silver of the sky and reflected the crimson streaks of the sunset. Below, surf creamed on a small secluded beach whose sand looked like white sugar. On either side of the small beach, rocks lifted jagged dark spears against which the sea leaped and bubbled.
Gripped by a sudden, unexpectedly strong emotion, Jess sank to the ground. The family homestead had not given her any sense of homecoming, nor had the others of her own blood made her welcome. Sea and rocks and setting sun and the cool salt breeze roughen-ing her cheeks combined into an all-embracing sense of familiarity. She did not feel, she knew, that at some other time, in some other form, she had stood here and watched the sun set over the THE CAMELOT CAPER / 229
western ocean, where the sunken land of Lyonnesse still sends up from the depths faint-chiming echoes of its buried churches.
“Splendid view,” David said, breaking the silence; and for a mad moment Jess resented his lack of understanding, an understanding which she felt, illogically, in the other man, who was in all else her declared enemy. She caught Cousin John’s unwilling eye, and knew that he felt the kinship too; he didn’t care for the feeling any more than she did. Momentarily his expression was unguarded, and his features, starkly lit by the sunset rays, held anxiety and distress. Then his mouth twisted in a sardonic smile.
“The call of the blood,” he said, in a voice that only she could hear. “Still—it’s the only part of the whole ramshackle place that’s worth saving. And for what it’s worth we’ve been here for a long time, Jess. That’s hewn stone you’re perched on. There was a castle here once.”
“You talk as if you expect to lose it—all of it,” Jess said.
“Oh, I shall.” His voice was indifferent, but she had seen through his defenses once, and now she recognized the underlying emotion. “There’s not much left, and death duties will take the lot. Just as well, probably.”
Jess stood up. Curiosity moved her, and so 230 / Elizabeth Peters
did discomfort; the rock was hard and sharp.
“A castle?” she said, poking at the turf. “Here?”
But she did not need his confirming nod to know that something man-made had once occupied the site.
The block on which she had been sitting was rough-hewn, and its shape was half obscured by weeds; but that shape was indubitably square. She walked along the cliff-edge and found other isolated blocks, then a line of them, as if they had fallen at the same time from a wall in a single earth spasm or battle.
Hands in his pockets, eyes on the glory in the west, David joined her. He kicked at a block.
“Not a very safe spot for a castle,” he commented.
“Right on the cliff edge.”
“It wasn’t so close to the edge five hundred years ago,” John said. “The cliffs lose a few feet every year.”
“Yes, but why do you think this was a castle? Probably one of the old tin mines. You see the towers all over Cornwall. About a century old.”
“Anyone with half an eye can tell the difference,”
John said rudely. “Ever seen Tintagel? It’s just up the coast. Same type of masonry as this.”
Jessica was overcome by a basic human urge, the urge to dig. She squatted on her heels and dug her fingers into the turf.
“Wouldn’t it be fun to find something?” she THE CAMELOT CAPER / 231
said, scratching. “A lady’s brooch, or a sword, or—why, David! I’ll bet this is where the ring came from!”
The enchantment of the sunset and the site had made her unwary, or she would not have spoken; looking up, she was struck by the expressions on the two faces, so different and yet so alike in their surprised reserve.
As usual, Cousin John was the first to recover himself.
“Not likely,” he said casually. “I’ve always suspected that the ring was one of the old man’s fakes. Time we were getting back, don’t you think?”
“It didn’t come from a medieval castle,” David said slowly. “It’s not…” He caught himself, so obviously on the brink of a significant remark that the other two both stared hopefully at him. “You said Mr. Tregarth spent a lot of money on digging. Here? Was he an amateur archaeologist?”
Cousin John’s not unhandsome face wore the look of bland innocence which meant, as Jess had learned, that he was about to tell a tall story.
“Amateur is right,” he said wryly. “But not archaeologist. De mortuis, and all that, but the old boy was a bit of a nut. Didn’t your father ever speak of his mania, Jessie?”
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“You mean about being descended from King Arthur?” Jess’s hands were hopelessly dirty by now; she abandoned herself in earnest, sitting down on the harsh grass.
“I thought he would. Poor old Uncle Gawain.”
“He never told me much,” Jess said vaguely; she had found something, a hard shape buried under inches of dirt. She broke a fingernail.
“The digging,” David persisted. “He excavated here, trying to prove—what? That this—good God, of course! That this was Camelot.”
“Completely mad,” Cousin John agreed amiably.
“Not so mad at that…Jess, get out of that mud puddle.”
“I’ve found something! Look—I’ve found…”
She pulled it out of its earthy grave, breaking two more nails in the process. In the pale, dimming light she held it up and stripped the disfiguring dirt from its elongated shape. It was glass. Thick, brown, opaque glass; crudely made, long, rounded…
“Beer bottle,” Cousin John said with a grin. “That’s the sort of thing he kept turning up, poor old soul. Not the bones of King Arthur.”
Jess wiped her hands on the grass and stood up.
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“Rats,” she said.
Neither of the men answered. David was staring off across the pasture, his back to the view and a sea which was now pale gold and mother-of-pearl. John was staring at him.
“Time to go,” John said abruptly, and started off without waiting for them.
“All the same, it wasn’t so mad,” David muttered.
“Somewhere…Where did I read that article….”
“Beer bottles,” Jess said. “Bah. David, it’s getting cold.”
“Professional journal? Hardly. Newspaper? Book?”
“If you two don’t hurry, you won’t get any sherry,”
John called back. He had stopped some little distance away and was waiting for them, his slight figure outlined against the sky.
They walked half the distance back to the house in silence. In the failing light Jess had to concentrate on where she was walking. David, his gaze fixed vacantly on the horizon, kept stumbling. A turn in the path brought them around so that the sea cliff and the sunset were on their right, and David stopped.
“What’s that?”
Jess followed his pointing hand and saw the object he indicated, outlined starkly against the 234 / Elizabeth Peters
darkening sky, its regularity of shape now visible—a long, low hill, like a giant grave.
“That?” Cousin John asked warily.
