Jason, Veronica Page 4

  "But it will be dark soon! And it may rain. I'm sure I heard thunder a few minutes ago."

  "I won't stay out long."

  She went upstairs to the big comer room at the rear of the house that had been hers ever since she outgrew the nursery. As she took down her warmest cloak from the clothespress, she glanced out the window. Between the tall ilex hedges that gave the house its name, a gravel path meandered among flowerbeds back to the carriage house. The flowerbeds were empty now except for bare rose bushes and withered stalks of last summer's marigolds and flox and daisies. In the old days those dead plants would long since have been cleared away. But there was no gardener now, only Elizabeth herself to tend the flowerbeds. Busy indoors, she often neglected the garden.

  I must at least dig up the dahlia roots, Elizabeth thought, and then realized that she was trying to postpone consideration of something far more unpleasant than a neglected garden.

  Leaving the house by the front door, she went along a brick walk between rows of dwarf boxwood that needed pruning, through a white wooden gate in the front hedge, and then down a short path. When she reached the narrow road that led, over rising ground, toward the village, she turned to her left.

  Her mother had been right about the corning rain. In the west, black clouds were massed below the gray overcast Now and then lightning flickered, followed by a growl of thunder. Above the empty brown fields, rooks hovered, cawing in that excited way that always presages a storm. Knowing that she could not stay out long, Elizabeth climbed the slope at a quickened pace.

  A girl. A girl naked and dead, or at least dying, in the areaway of the Montlow town house. Why had she, the moment she heard of the girl, thought of Christopher?

  She hated herself for it. It was monstrous that she should think, even for a moment, that her little brother... And it was illogical, too. Christopher was at Oxford, watched over by dons and proctors and by the porter in the gate lodge of his particular college. And even if by some strange circumstance he had been in London last night, he and the "young persons" would not have had to break into the house. As befitted someone approaching man's estate, he had been supplied with keys to both the Hedges and the London house before he enrolled at Oxford.

  And yet she kept thinking of the hanged kitten and of the engraving she had found on the floor of her brother's clothespress.

  She had reached level ground now. She walked on, past fields that were part of Montlow lands, dimly aware that the last of the dull light was going and that the thunder had grown louder. Just why did she feel this shrinking reluctance to tell her mother? True, the news would be a shock. But when a bailiff arrived to notify them officially of the break-in, Mrs. Montlow need not even see him. Elizabeth would take care of that, and also, if necessary, go to London to assay whatever damage had been done to the house and its furnishings.

  Would she also be asked to try to identify the girl, or had someone already done that? She fervently hoped someone had.

  The girl. Christopher and the kitten.

  Only half an hour ago she had been thinking of how she and Donald, in a violent world made up of the ruthless rich and the hopeless, often criminal poor, would live out their lives somewhere in between, in a little oasis of warmth and peace. Now she had a sense of some cruel force gathering itself to shatter that modest dream....

  The first large drops of rain struck the hood of her cloak. With a start, she realized that it was almost completely dark. What was more, she had walked farther than she had intended to. Turning, she hurried back toward the Hedges in its cup of low hills.

  Before she had gone more than a few yards, the storm was upon her, blotting out what remained of the light, drenching her with rain. Lightning flashed, giving her an eerie glimpse of the rain-darkened road and the empty fields stretching away beyond their low stone walls. The bolt had grounded somewhere nearby, because only a split second later she heard the deafening thunderclap. Despite the mud now weighting her shoes and the hem of her cloak, she broke into a half-run.

  Another flash, lighting up the trunk and leafless branches of an oak a few yards ahead at the roadside. When the almost simultaneous roll of thunder died away, she heard another sound, a muffled clop of hooves. Somewhere in the darkness behind her, a horse and rider were approaching at a gallop.

  Probably it was just some farmer, hurrying on one errand or another to the village a few miles the other side of the Hedges. But in these perilous times, with hundreds of highwaymen roaming about to rob stagecoaches and lone travelers, hoofbeats by night were an ominous sound even on country roads such as this one. Heart hammering, she moved even faster. She must be close to that oak tree now. Yes, she could see it, a deeper dark against the darkness. She moved to its far side and stood motionless against the thick trunk. Mount and rider were so close now that she could hear not only hooves but also the jingle of a bridle.

  Perhaps the horse caught her scent. She heard a frightened whinny. Then lightning flashed. She had a glimpse of a rearing gray horse and a dark-clothed rider bathed in blue-white radiance. For a frightened instant she thought the rider must surely see her. But apparently he was too absorbed in trying to control his mount to even glance at the roadside.

  Darkness swallowed up horse and rider. She heard the horse whinny again, and the man say, "Stop it, you bloody fool." Then he rode past. His face, shadowed by his tricorne hat, had been invisible to her. But there had been something familiar about the set of the broad shoulders beneath the enveloping cloak, and something familiar about his voice. She waited until she could no longer hear the beat of hooves. Then she moved out into the road.

  The storm proved to be as brief as it had been violent. Before she had gone more than a few yards, the rain dwindled. Finally it ceased. A full moon, still thinly veiled, sent a diffused radiance over the muddy road and the drenched fields. She looked back and saw, in the now cloudless strip of sky above the western horizon, the planet Venus shining like a miniature second moon.

  She had gone through the gate in the tall hedge and was hurrying up the walk when Mrs. Montlow opened the front door. "Drenched to the skin! Elizabeth, I will never understand you. How is it that a clever girl can behave like a backward child?"

  "I'm sorry," Elizabeth said, moving past her mother into the house. "I know it's almost time for supper. I'll go right upstairs and change my clothes."

  ***

  Two hours later the Montlow women again sat in the small side parlor, Mrs. Montlow with her embroidery, Elizabeth pretending to read. She had not wanted to upset her mother at the supper table. But soon now she would have to lay her book aside and break the news.

  A tapping against the glass doors that led onto the terrace. Elizabeth's head jerked up. Mrs. Montlow said, half-delighted, half-alarmed, "Why, it's Christopher!"

  For a moment Elizabeth sat rigid, staring at the slender cloaked figure, the troubled, angelically handsome face in its frame of pale hair. Too late, she thought. Too late now to prepare her mother—although to prepare her for what, Elizabeth could not have said. Aware that her mother was getting to her feet, she too stood up, crossed the room, and unlatched the glass doors.

  "Liza!" Then: "Please, Mama! Please sit down again."

  Obediently, Mrs. Montlow sank back into her chair. Christopher's tricorne hat dropped from his hand to the floor. Then he crossed to his mother, fell to his knees, and buried his head in her lap. "Oh, Mama! Forgive me!"

  Still with that look of pleasure mingled with bewilderment and alarm, Mrs. Montlow touched his hair. "Forgive you for what, my son? What has happened, my darling?"

  "I was sent down."

  "Sent down? From Oxford?"

  "Three days ago. They said that some of my friends and I made old Quigley fall down the stairs."

  "Quigley? Who is—"

  "He lays the fires in our rooms. And he stole my ring. I know he did. We were trying to make him admit it when he somehow lost his balance and fell down the stairs."

  Christopher was pr
oud of that bit of invention. Sooner or later he would have had to explain the ring's absence from his finger. Best to blame old Quigley.

  "Your grandfather's ruby ring? Oh, how dreadful! Didn't you tell the dons he'd stolen it?"

  "They wouldn't have believed me. I had no proof. And Quigley's been there about a hundred years. They would all have been on his side. And I was afraid that if I tried to argue they would never let me back into Oxford. I know how much that would grieve you, Mama. I knew you'd feel my education was more important than any ring."

  "Of course, my darling."

  "Then you won't say anything to the dons about the ring?"

  "But, Christopher! A ring that valuable—"

  "It would just make things worse for me, Mama. I'd never get back in."

  As he waited for her answer, he thought angrily of old Quigley. Everything had been his fault, really. If he hadn't kept jabbering about how that part of the college was haunted—by a student who was killed in a duel nearly two hundred years ago—they wouldn't have known he was afraid of ghosts. They would never have thought of dressing up in sheets and jumping out at him there on the dark landing. As he'd backed away from them, white as a ghost himself, Christopher had been unable to resist making a lunge toward the old idiot. Quigley had shied backward, teetered on the top steps for an instant, and then slid headfirst down the stairs.

  Everything still might have been all right if they'd had a chance to scatter to their rooms and strip off the sheets. But at that moment, on the floor below, a don had poked his head out of a doorway and seen them up there at the top of the stairs.

  Mrs. Montlow said, "Then of course I won't make a fuss about the ring, my darling."

  His sister had said nothing since he came into the room. He turned his head so that he could see her, standing motionless beside the fireplace. Her face was rigid. God's blood! Could she already have heard about the girl?

  His mother said, "But if you were sent down three days ago, where have you been since then?"

  "Geoffrey was sent down with me. Lord Stanley's son, you know. His parents are in Rome, so there was no one but a manservant in his London house. I spent the first two nights there." That much, at least, was true.

  "And last night?"

  "Oh, Mama! That is what I am too ashamed to tell you."

  Elizabeth's heart set up a frightened pounding. She knew she must say something, do something, to protect her mother from what he was about to reveal, but a kind of paralysis held her motionless and silent.

  Mrs. Montlow said sternly, "No matter how ashamed you are, you must tell me, my son."

  "I spent the night with Mrs. Frazier-Fitzsimmons. I went to her house for tea yesterday afternoon, and I... I didn't leave there until early this morning."

  In her relief, Elizabeth felt an impulse to burst into hysterical laughter. Here she had pictured her young brother involved in some unspeakable crime the night before. And all he had done was to share the bed of the smartest and most expensive bawd in London.

  Mrs. Montlow, though, was horrified. At many of the morning coffees she had attended in London during past seasons, Mrs. Frazier-Fitzsimmons had been avidly discussed. The ladies had speculated about the cost of the house bought for her by a certain duke, and had disputed as to which of her other lovers had given her a carriage and pair, and the diamond tiara she wore when attending the theater at Covent Garden.

  "Son! How is it you even know a woman like that?"

  He explained—and again, so much was true—that Geoffrey had introduced them during last summer's "long vacation." He and his friend had been strolling one afternoon in Hyde Park. "Mrs. Frazier-Fitzsimmons' carriage stopped beside us, and Geoffrey presented me, and she made it clear that... that she liked me very much, Mama, liked me enough that if I called on her I wouldn't be expected to give her... any sort of present."

  Mrs. Montlow looked down at her son, feeling disapproval mingled with a tender, faintly amused pride. Her little boy had grown into a man now, a man so attractive that a woman like Mrs. Frazier-Fitzsimmons would grant him her expensive favors for nothing.

  "That was wrong of you, my son. You should have nothing to do with such women."

  She realized the futility of her own words. As she herself had said, she was not "clever," but she was clever enough to know that forbidding a boy of his generation to stay away from such women was like forbidding a young eagle to fly.

  "I know." Still kneeling, he raised his head and looked up at her. "There is more I have to tell you. None of it is my fault, but it will... distress you, Mama."

  Again Elizabeth's nerves tensed. Her mother said, "Tell me, Christopher. Don't be afraid."

  "I... I was still asleep this morning when Peggy—I mean, Mrs. Frazier-Fitzsimmons—came back upstairs. She said her maid told her that she'd heard that the Kingman Street house had been broken into early the evening before."

  "Our house?"

  "Yes. It was a group of young men, and they had some girl with them, and there was some sort of accident. She fell through a window or something. Anyway, Peggy said there were bailiffs—Bow Street Runners—looking for me to arrest me."

  "Bailiffs! Arrest you! But why...?

  "I don't know. I suppose it was just because it was my house." Aware of his sister standing rigid and silent, gray eyes fastened on his face, he began to speak very rapidly. "Anyway, I was frightened. I wanted to get to you and Liza before the bailiffs found me. Peggy took me in her carriage as far as Highgate, and I... I walked all the way from there, Mama. When I got near home—it was early this afternoon then—I realized how hard it would be to tell you all this. And so I slipped through the garden's back gate and into the carriage house. I... I've been hiding out there for five or six hours, trying to get my courage...." His voice faltered.

  Elizabeth stared at the slender, kneeling figure with the face of a Botticelli angel. How much of his story was true? Had he really spent all last night with that woman, and then left London this morning? Or had he fled the city last evening, soon after a girl had fallen to her death, and then walked fifteen miles through the darkness to the carriage house? Perhaps he had been hiding out there since not long after the previous midnight, rather than just since early this afternoon.

  Her mother said, "You have told us, my son, and now there is no reason to be afraid. You cannot be arrested for something you didn't do. Isn't that right, Elizabeth?"

  "If a bailiff comes here with a warrant for Christopher's arrest," Elizabeth said, "he will have to execute that warrant." She saw her brother's large blue eyes throw her a swift, wary glance.

  "But Elizabeth! When the house was broken into, Christopher was with that woman." Fleetingly Mrs. Montlow wondered if the house had been damaged and if the "accident" involving the girl her son had mentioned had been a serious one. But all of that was a minor consideration compared to Christopher's welfare. "All Christopher has to do is to tell the bailiff he was with that woman last night She will confirm his story. Why not? She has no reputation to lose."

  Christopher got to his feet "Liza is right, Mama. If a bailiff comes here with a warrant he'll have to arrest me, no matter what anybody says. And it won't matter what Peggy tells the authorities, now or later. The word of a woman like that won't carry any weight.

  "And that is why," he rushed on, "that you and Liza have got to say I came home yesterday afternoon, and had supper with you, and slept last night in my room. Hawkins has to say it, too. If you all three say that, and keep saying it, I may not even have to stand trial. And even if I do, I'll be freed."

  "Stand trial?" Mrs. Montlow's face was still bewildered. "I don't understand any of this. Even if you had done it, which you did not, how could they make you stand trial for breaking into your own house?"

  "The girl, Mama. Remember I said they had a girl with them? What if she was badly hurt? What if she is... dead?"

  His mother's face went white. She whispered, "Oh, Christopher!"

  "Don't look like that, M
ama! It will be all right if you and Liza stand by me. All you have to say is that I have been with you since yesterday afternoon."

  "Oh, my son! Of course we will. Won't we, Elizabeth?"

  Elizabeth said, after a long moment, "He is asking us to commit perjury."

  Outraged color dyed Mrs. Montlow's face. Seeing it, Elizabeth felt that at least it was less frightening than her pallor of a moment before. "Perjury!" Mrs. Montlow said. "Here your brother may be put on trial for..." She could not say the word. "And you stand there using silly words like 'perjury.'"

  She got to her feet. "Christopher, are you hungry?"

  "Yes. Very hungry."

  "Go upstairs to your room. I want to talk to your sister alone. Then I'll bring some food up to you."

  "Thank you, Mama." He bent, kissed her cheek.

  He had to pass close to Elizabeth as he left the room. He gave her one sad, appealing glance, and then, head bent, went out into the hall. The two women heard him climbing the stairs.

  "Now!" Mrs. Montlow began firmly.

  "Mother, if we're going to talk, please sit down."

  "Very well." Mrs. Montlow sank into her chair. Elizabeth crossed the room to a small cabinet, took a vial of smelling salts from its upper drawer, and then came to her mother's side. "Breathe this."

  After an apprehensive glance at her daughter's face, Mrs. Montlow took the vial from her hand and inhaled deeply. Then she said, "What is it? Do you have something more to tell me?"

  "That girl in our house last night. She did die."

  Mrs. Montlow lost color. Holding the vial to her nostrils, she again breathed deeply. Then she said, almost calmly, "How is it you know this?"

  "Hawkins told me, just before I went out for a walk this afternoon. The butcher had heard the story in the village, and he told her about it when he brought the joint of mutton. I was about to tell you when Christopher tapped on the terrace door."