Betrayal at Blackcrest Page 10

  “I was worried. I thought it might be Derek—that’s why I wanted to come back to my room this way. You see, we had that terrible quarrel last night, and he’s been watching me all day. I think he saw me slipping out tonight.”

  “And you thought he’d be waiting downstairs to confront you as you came in?”

  She nodded, still twisting her hands.

  “Well, we’ve tricked him,” I replied, as though it were a rather jolly conspiracy.

  “I want to thank you for not mentioning seeing me last night. He suspected where I went, of course, but if you had told him for sure, I hate to think what he might have done.”

  “I promised, didn’t I?”

  She looked at me for a long moment. She seemed to be searching for something in my face—sincerity, honesty, trustworthiness—and after a while she looked away, apparently satisfied. She relaxed, sitting back in the chair and arranging the grass-stained white skirt over her knees. I sat with one leg curled under me, my hand resting on the bedpost. The girl had a desperate need to confide in someone. I had just been elected.

  “You do understand, don’t you?” she said in a quiet voice.

  “I think so. I was seventeen once. I’m not exactly in the grave right now.”

  “Neil needs me. I need him.”

  “Then you’re both very lucky,” I replied.

  “Why can’t anyone else understand that? Why do they think he’s only interested in my money? I wish I didn’t have a cent. I wish I were a waitress or a clerk at Woolworth’s. Then everyone would say how lucky I was to have an ambitious, hard-working boy like Neil. But no, I have an inheritance, and so he’s no good, a teddy boy with long hair and a motorcycle. I have to meet him in secret. I have to live on plans that might never work out.”

  “Why shouldn’t they?” I asked.

  She hesitated a moment. “Derek,” she said.

  “There’s nothing he can do when you turn eighteen.”

  “You don’t know him. He … he has ways. He’ll wreck everything and say it’s for my own good. He’s bitter. He hates people. Just because he was disappointed and betrayed once, he thinks everyone is rotten. He refuses to believe anyone can have decent motives. He suspects everyone of being … foul. He has no feelings. He doesn’t know how to feel.”

  “What happened to make him so bitter?” I asked. “A woman?”

  “Yes. Several years ago. She was beautiful, the daughter of one of Hawkestown’s leading families. They were engaged, and everyone said they were a perfect match. Derek was different then. He laughed. He had an interest in something besides his investments and the firm in London. I was just a child, but I can remember him whistling as he came down the stairs. They would go horseback riding and have picnics and take canoe rides down the river. Then his buddy came down from London.”

  “His buddy?”

  “They were in the service together, stationed in South Africa. Both of them were demobbed at the same time and planned to go in business together, start their own brokerage. Then his buddy came to Hawkestown to discuss financing the project, and he met Derek’s fiancée. That was all. They ran off together. The two people Derek thought most of in the world betrayed him. He was never the same again. The girl came back after a few months. She wanted to be forgiven. Derek threw her out of Blackcrest. She committed suicide. She drowned herself.”

  “How dreadful,” I whispered.

  “The people in town blamed him. They said he killed her, as surely as if he’d pushed her in the river and held her down. They hate him, all of them, and he seems to thrive on their hate. He rarely goes to Hawkestown, but when he does, he’s like an ancient lord come to snub the local peasants, despising them, treating them like dirt. He feels no guilt about the death of the girl. He loved her once, but when she ran away with his best friend, he murdered all feeling he might have had.”

  “It must be awful to have her death on his conscience,” I said.

  “He doesn’t. He doesn’t feel anything. There was a lot of resentment in Hawkestown, a lot of confusion, even talk about revenge. The girl’s brother came to Blackcrest with a riding crop. He was going to beat Derek. Derek broke his arm, and the constable couldn’t do anything about it because it was self-defense. The girl’s family left Hawkestown, but people still remember. People still hate him. They’re still afraid of him.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Everyone is afraid of him,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything. Honora stared in front of her, remembering. She brushed at the grass stains with one pale hand, paying no attention to the gesture. Her blue eyes seemed to be suddenly very old, eyes that had witnessed something horrifying and didn’t belong to a seventeen-year-old girl.

  “Does he never leave Blackcrest?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Only on business.”

  “I suppose that takes him to London?”

  She nodded, thinking of something else.

  I had to be very careful. The girl was high-strung and nervous. If she suspected that I was pumping her for information, she would shut up tight and refuse to tell me anything more. There was a delicate balance between idle curiosity and downright prying. I had to simulate the former and avoid any indication of the latter.

  “When was he last there?” I asked, smoothing down the bedclothes and not looking at her.

  “Sometime last month,” she replied. “He had to see about some of his investments or something. He stayed at his club, I think. It was so nice while he was away. Neil and I didn’t have to sneak around. It was wonderful; but he came back, and it was worse than ever.”

  “How long was he in London?”

  “Almost a month. He left around the middle of March and came back around the middle of April.”

  Delia had started talking about her new boyfriend around the middle of March, and on April 14 she had taken her savings out of the bank and left London. I wondered how he would explain away that coincidence.

  “Has there been any other woman since his fiancée betrayed him?” I asked. I was tense, waiting for her answer, but she would never have known it. I brushed a lock of hair from my temple and stared at one of the windows set high in the wall.

  “I … I’m not sure,” Honora replied.

  Something in her voice made me look up sharply. Honora was afraid. The planes of her cheekbones looked drawn, her eyes incredibly large. A quiver started at the corner of her lips. She twisted her hands, wringing them together, unconscious of doing so.

  “I saw something,” she said. Her voice was flat.

  “What?”

  She did not reply. She didn’t seem to hear me.

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  A shadow seemed to pass over the girl’s face. She stood up, brushing her skirt. Her hands trembled as she brushed at the grass stains. I felt my heart pounding, and it took everything I had to keep from screaming at her and demanding an answer to my question. Honora did not look at me. She brushed at the dark green stains, and I knew it was a deliberate evasion.

  “You can trust me,” I said quietly.

  She stood up straight. She passed nervous fingers along the platinum waves and looked at me with calm blue eyes. She had composed herself now, but I could sense her tension. She held herself erect, but I felt that the least little thing would cause her to crumple. She smiled at me and tried to sound natural, but her voice betrayed her.

  “I must go to my room. It’s so late—thoughtless of me to keep you up like this. You’ve been very kind—listening to my chatter. Andy says you’re going to be here for at least a week. That’s nice. Nice. Forgive me for carrying on—I had to talk. I’ve talked too much. That isn’t good. Some things—”

  “Honora,” I pleaded. “You didn’t answer my question. What did you see? It … it’s very important.”

  “Then you must ask Derek,” she said.

  She opened the hall door. She left abruptly, leaving the door open. As I went to close it, I saw her hurrying down t
he corridor, her white skirt flashing in the shadows. She disappeared, and I closed the door, weak with frustration. I leaned against the door and tried to control my impatience and disappointment.

  “Damn,” I said. “Oh, damn!”

  10

  The scratching sound was not loud, but it was shockingly persistent. The onyx clock on the dresser informed me that it was barely six-thirty, and only a few rays of dim yellow light dripped into the room from the slits of window set high up in the wall. I groaned and buried my face in the pillow, willing the scratching sound to disappear, but it only grew more frantic, augmented by a mewing that caused me to throw the covers back and stare at the door with fury.

  I marched to the door and threw it open. I was prepared to rant and rave, but the tiny creature at my feet darted around me and made a running leap at the bed. It burrowed under the covers, a tiny mound moving under the orange counterpane. The mound gave a small quiver, grew still, and was nothing but a minute lump near the foot of the bed. I stood at the door, shivering. It had all happened in less than a minute, and I was still foggy with sleep.

  I jerked the counterpane back. The kitten looked up at me, prepared to fight. It had enormous blue-green eyes and a tiny, tiny body covered with ginger fur. Seeing no lethal weapon in my hand, it rolled over on its back, flicked a tiny pink tongue at me, and kicked four padded feet in the air, expecting, no doubt, to be scratched and played with. I was in no mood for frolics. I stared at it angrily.

  “Do you realize what time it is?” I demanded. “No decent cat would dare bother a person at this hour. Besides, cats don’t have blue-green eyes.”

  The kitten rolled over and kicked at the counterpane, delighted at the sound of my voice. I sat down on the edge of the bed. The kitten stared at me for a moment, crouching on all fours, ready to pounce. Then it made a great leap and landed on the back of my hand. It sank kitten teeth into one of my fingers. I pulled my hand away, not at all amused. The kitten scrambled into my lap and began to examine the texture of my silk pajamas with four sets of claws. I lifted it up carefully and set it aside, grumbling.

  “Give a girl a break,” I said. “It’s hardly dawn.”

  The kitten went into a fit of ecstasy and galloped around the bed, suddenly intrigued with its tail and determined to clamp its teeth about that elusive ginger member. I gave up. I went to the wardrobe and took out my clothes, not at all elated by this feline intrusion. I decided to take the animal back downstairs and deposit it with its more sensible colleagues.

  I slipped down the hall to the tiny bathroom Andrea had designated for my use, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and stared irritably at the somewhat haggard face in the shadowy mirror. The kitten was still gamboling about the bed when I returned to the tower room. I put on a russet sweater and a pair of tight brown slacks, sitting down on the bed to slip on a pair of brown sneakers. The kitten, expecting some grand outing, paused in its pursuit and regarded me with a whimsical expression. It licked one paw, then another, waiting for me to finish.

  “All right, sport,” I said. “Let’s move.”

  I opened the door to the landing, and the kitten leaped off the bed and followed me out. His tiny paws made small clicking noises on the cement floor. He followed me down two flights of winding stairs, purring contentedly. The basement was cold and dark.

  I found the light switch that lit the bulb hanging near the door of the cats’ room. The white globe burst with radiance, throwing light on the damp walls with their rusty pipes, gleaming on the cracked floor. I saw light green fungus growing over some of the bricks and could smell the decay all around me. It wasn’t yet seven o’clock. I wasn’t ready for this.

  “Here we go, sweetie,” I said, my hand on the knob of the dark oak door. “In you go.”

  The door wouldn’t open. It was locked. The kitten seemed to be delighted. It leaped and bounced at my feet, throwing grotesque shadows on the wall. I was puzzled.

  “If the door was locked, how did you get out, kid? Have you been roaming around all night?”

  The kitten looked up at me with enigmatic blue-green eyes, twitching its whiskers.

  “I suppose we’d better go back upstairs. Don’t think you’re getting off scot-free. I shall certainly report you to Andrea, and I’ll personally see to it that you’re punished. I could have slept for at least another hour.”

  The kitten was off. It ran down the long hall with great bounds. I saw it disappear into the shadows and could hear the soft echoes made by its padded feet. I was tempted to give the whole thing up, but I felt a certain responsibility for the disreputable little creature and I didn’t want it to get lost, even though there had been moments earlier when the idea would have enchanted me.

  I hurried down the hall after it, leaving the lighted area behind. The hall grew narrow, until it became nothing more than a small passage. The ceiling seemed to slant down. I could hear the kitten ahead padding happily along in the darkness. There was a loud clatter as it knocked a box over. The noise seemed to explode in the silence, and the echoes reverberated against the close walls.

  I passed through a room piled high with old magazines and boxes and bins. There was just enough light streaming through a basement window for me to see a rat perched on one of the boxes. I shuddered and hurried on, following the noise of the kitten. I was in the main hall again. I could feel drafts of chilly air coming through a broken window. The kitten had disappeared, and there was now no noise to follow.

  I paused. There was almost total darkness here, and the air was clammy. The ceiling was so low that I almost touched it with the top of my head. The beams seemed to sag, and dusty particles of plaster drifted down like fine snow. I called the kitten in a pleading voice. Fingers of cold, clammy air seemed to stroke my cheeks. There was a peculiar smell I couldn’t identify.

  The cellar door creaked. It was standing wide open, and the drafts of air were coming up from below. I stood very still, listening. I could hear a gentle padding noise echoing up, a mere whisper of noise, and I knew the kitten had gone down. Andrea had complained about the door being open yesterday. This being the case, I wondered why it was standing wide open this morning. Either Morris had forgotten to close it after he brought the kitten up yesterday or else Jessie had been at it again, far more committed in her criminal nipping than even Andrea suspected.

  My intentions were the best, but there are limits to everything. I wasn’t about to go down in the cellars after the kitten. The smell alone was enough to make the idea thoroughly unsavory. I had visions of falling down the damp steps and breaking my neck, and if that didn’t happen, I could see myself getting lost in the labyrinth. The kitten would just have to stay there until I could summon Morris or someone else who knew his way around down there. No, I’d done enough for one morning, I decided, and I was about to leave, when I heard the cry.

  It was heart-rending. It was low and terrified. It came from far below, but it reached me with all the impact of a cannon shot. The kitten was lost, and it was afraid, and it cried out with a sound so plaintive that I was rooted to the spot. The cry echoed away, and then there was a whining noise, like crying. That did it. I had never particularly cared for cats, but only a monster could have walked away from a sound like that.

  Luck was with me. Hanging on a bent nail just inside the door was a long, slender flashlight. I pushed the button on the handle, and a strong ray of white light penetrated the darkness. I pointed it down the steps and moved slowly down, staying near the wall. The steps were slabs of flat rock, rough-hewn and none too smooth. They were coated with moisture. There was no railing, and it was a sheer drop from the exposed side of the steps to the earthen floor below. I was thankful my sneakers had good crepe soles.

  This first room was enormous and pitch-dark. The flashlight shone on towering racks that had once held bottles. All were empty now. Spiders had been at work, covering the racks with glittering silken webs. I touched one of them accidentally and shuddered as I pulled the sticky mess aw
ay from my hand. In one corner there was a broken barrel. It had once held ale. The swollen wooden pieces reeked of it. The floor was littered with empty bottles, some broken, some still containing drops of wine. I stumbled over the rough floor, pointing the ray of light here and there, calling to the kitten in a soft voice.

  Several dark passages led away from this main room, and I followed one of them, stooping down so that I wouldn’t crack my head on the ceiling. The passage twisted around a corner and led into a room similar to the first. Here some of the racks still held bottles of wine, row upon row of the finest vintage, all of them draped with cobwebs. There was no sign of the kitten.

  I called again. I heard a scurrying sound from one of the passages that led still farther away. I followed the sound. The beam of light pointed through a long, narrow tunnel with walls of natural rock, gleaming with greenish moisture. The room I came into was filled with wooden kegs. The faucet of one of them had been left open, and all the wine had dripped out. The alcoholic fumes were potent.

  The kitten was crouched on a low table beside one of the kegs. Its blue-green eyes were enormous in the beam of light, and its tiny body trembled violently. I moved toward it, speaking soft words. It seemed to be terrified. As I reached for it, it leaped off the table and ran around me, mewing loudly. I switched the light around in time to see its fluffy tail disappearing around the corner of another passage.

  I stood beside the table, hesitating. Derek Hawke had told me that the cellars spread out underneath the whole of Blackcrest, like ancient catacombs. I had already come a long way from the hazardous stairs, and I was not certain I could find my way back. It would be so easy to get lost down here. I shuddered at the thought. No one knew I had come down to the cellars. I visualized horrified hours spent in going from room to room, trying to find a way out. If I called for help, no one would hear me. The beam of the flashlight was already growing dim. I did not know how long the battery would hold out. Without light to guide me, I might never find my way back.