A Demon Summer (45 page)

“And Dame Pet?” asked the abbess now, more softly. “How does Dame Pet and the poison fit into this story? Or, does it?”

“Dame Petronilla. Yes. For that story we also have to reach back into the past, to a time when Dame Petronilla was Miss Petronilla Falcon, a young nanny in the charge of a small baby born at Nashbury Feathers, ancestral home of the Lislelivet family. The baby named Fontaine Perceval.”

“The baby who was kidnapped?” This was Clement Gorey. He looked to his wife for confirmation. She nodded. “When was it this happened? Fifteen years ago or more, right?”

“Closer to eighteen,” Max answered him. “It was a case often compared with the 1930s kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh, Jr., the son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The tragic difference being that while the Lindbergh baby's little body finally was discovered, two months after the ransom had been paid, there was no such closure, no such small, cold comfort, for the Perceval family—Lord Lislelivet and his wife. The ransom was paid as demanded, but after detectives had been led on a wild chase over the countryside, the baby never was found, dead or alive.

“As is often the case, the blame for this tragedy spread quickly, and many innocent people suffered. The nanny, for instance, was accused of neglecting her duty, being otherwise occupied with her fiancé, when she should have been watching the baby. A charge, I hasten to add, that was baseless, but a charge that was trumpeted repeatedly by Ralph Perceval, the heir to the family's fortune. The engulfing investigation burned everything in its path, and when it was over—when the media had found new stories to cover—it had changed many lives. Many of the people who worked for the family suddenly found themselves let go, and then found themselves unemployable. No one was willing to take a chance on them, you see. Probably most particularly in the case of a nanny. The ‘what ifs?' loomed too large. What if the accusations were true? The same was the case with her fiancé, who was studying to be a doctor, a pediatrician, in fact, and who was suspected—and cleared—of being in collusion with the nanny. The child had been ailing with a mild cold, and the doctor-in-training had looked in on him once or twice. The innuendo in this sort of case is always enough to destroy lives, particularly in the case of a nanny and pediatrician—what parent would ever entrust either of them with the care of a child?

“His career was derailed as much by the ruin to his reputation as by the emotional wear and tear of the repeated dunning by the press, who blithely and irresponsibly repeated Ralph's accusations, working the sensational story for all it was worth. Imagine opening each day's news to find vile, baseless allegations printed against oneself?

“The implication was that the young, attractive nanny had been too busy cavorting with her fiancé to attend to her duties. But the baby was asleep—it was nighttime—and she told investigators no sound came through the baby monitor.

“So what she was expected to do other than what she did do is a mystery. Still this all got twisted into a seedy story of a licentious woman abandoning her responsibilities to a helpless child. The voice of reason, as so often happens, got shouted down. It was so ugly a story it is perhaps no wonder she chose entering a nunnery as the only way to prove she was the person she always had been: diligent, hardworking, smart, loyal—and deeply religious.

“The truth is the nanny loved the child, stolen as she slept. But the truth was no match for Ralph Perceval, the victim's brother. He kept saying the kidnappers entered the house while she was ‘otherwise engaged.' The words were neatly strung together to imply, without actually saying, that she was busy entertaining her fiancé. But denials were fruitless. Otherwise, there was no juicy story to run repeatedly in the morning and evening news. Ralph Perceval even tried to claim she had left the window unlocked so her lover could enter, and that is how the kidnappers got in afterwards. Ridiculous. But it was necessary to make everything sound demeaning, and tawdry.”

Dame Petronilla looked up from studying her tightly clenched hands. “I couldn't afford a solicitor on the wages he paid,” she said. “So I just took the abuse. I never should have done that. But I thought it would all go away, it was so ridiculous. Accusations not worth responding to. Until you're there, you've no idea how insidious that kind of lie and suspicion can be.”

Max paused, as if she might go on, but from her expression, she had retreated back into the memories of those life-altering days. After a few moments, he continued: “When first we spoke, you mentioned that you had some training as a nurse, not that you had been a nanny.”

“I know,” she acknowledged. “The glib lie. How easy it is to fall into the custom of eliding over the entire truth. I was hoping, of course, that no one would make the connection between me and Nashbury Feathers. Then when Lord Lislelivet was killed…”

“It was inevitable it would come out,” Max finished her thought. Resuming his tale, he said, “So after a time of what I think we can rightly call persecution, you joined the nearby nunnery. And your fiancé, broken by the whole thing, left for the United States to finish his training, in a different area of specialization.

“But he couldn't stay away long. When he had completed his studies he returned and set up shop in the village of Temple Monkslip, to be near the woman he could not forget. Perhaps he carried with him the misguided hope they could reignite the old flame. He had given up a promising Harley Street career—been forced to give it up, actually, because of the taint of scandal that followed him everywhere. And so he became a G.P. in a small village and called himself content, although he was hardly that. He never married, still carrying this torch for Petronilla Falcon, the woman he had loved. He would come to the nunnery on occasion, eventually becoming the official doctor for the place. But his former fiancée avoided him and begged him to stay away from her. Loving her still, he did as she asked.”

By this point in Max's narrative, all eyes had swiveled toward Dr. Barnard, who kept his own gaze straight ahead, his face revealing nothing.

“Then one day, Dr. Barnard heard of Lord Lislelivet's interest in the nunnery. There is one watering hole in Temple Monkslip, the Running Knight and Pilgrim, and Lord Lislelivet's staying there was news in a small village where nothing much happens. Every word of Lord Lislelivet's conversation got repeated, particularly the fact that he seemed as fascinated by the icon—the Face—as anyone else. One of the men who worked on the wall repairs had a story to tell, and tell it he would, to any and all comers, for the price of a pint. For the price of several pints, he would talk of vast golden treasure, precious beyond counting.

“He was making it up as he went, of course. The nuns would never have allowed him to set eyes on the Face. During the repairs, they found another, temporary hiding place.

“Anyway, the next thing you know, Lord Lislelivet is staying at Monkbury Abbey on what he calls a religious retreat. The doctor knows Lord Lislelivet well enough, as does the whole English-speaking world, to know he must be up to something. The doctor, making the logical leap, thinks he is probably after the icon.

“Lady Lislelivet doesn't know what her husband was up to, but she reaches the same conclusion. Lord Lislelivet got awfully keen on a return visit to the abbey, despite the apparent danger to himself.

“But in fact, and Dr. Barnard was not to know this at first, Lord Lislelivet had a more sinister motive.

“Still, whatever he was up to, it is enough to alarm the doctor, to have Lord Lislelivet in such close proximity to the doctor's beloved Petronilla. It doesn't mean she's in danger, necessarily. It is probably more in his mind that he can't stand the thought of this man anywhere near someone as innocent and unspoiled as he knew his old love to be.

“And perhaps … perhaps the good doctor thinks he has a chance to set things right, to undo history. To win her back by slaying the dragon—this time. To do the thing he had, in his own mind, singularly failed to do when he had the chance years before.”

There was a slight, almost imperceptible nod of the doctor's head.

“I still don't get it,” said Xanda. “What does this have to do with the kidnapping?”

“When it comes to the topic of greed, Xanda, I'm afraid it has everything to do with it. Greed on a monstrous scale, surpassing any sort of passing interest Lord Lislelivet may have had in the icon. For this greed involved the betrayal of innocents, the destruction of the family that raised and nurtured him. The greed of the viper in the nest.”

“I still don't—” began Xanda.

“The inheritance,” said Max simply. “The inheritance that, in the mind of the man who organized the scheme, was worth any amount of betrayal of those who had cherished and sustained him. An inheritance worth killing for, to his twisted way of thinking. Not only were money and land attached to the inheritance, but prestige. Perhaps above all—prestige. There was a title belonging to one of the most noble of ancient families in Great Britain. And having carried the title so long, Lord Lislelivet, as we will continue to call him for now, was not about to relinquish it. Not when just one woman of no consequence to him stood in his way.

“Even if that person was the woman who had given him life.”

“You mean, Dame
Meredith
?”

“Yes. Of course. Sadly—of course.

“Dame Petronilla, now the infirmaress, was a nanny at the time of the famous kidnapping, when the nearly newborn son of the fourteenth earl was taken from his crib. The accusations flew, and a close rereading of the news stories of the time shows that behind every accusation and innuendo stood the young Ralph Percival. His father, the fourteenth earl, still being alive, Ralph, then aged twenty, was the heir presumptive. He was a spendthrift, an alcoholic, and a drug user; a liar, a thief, and a complete wastrel, but he was the heir, and unless he became completely unable to function in any capacity, he would remain the heir. The Lislelivets were not the first nor the last family of noble blood to have to deal with a black sheep, of course. The dissolute heir has been a staple of some of England's livelier spots of history.

“But these accusations, as I say, all from the same source, were so unrelenting the nanny and the doctor came to suspect what I know from Dame Meredith was the truth. They suspected young Ralph, the heir presumptive, of masterminding the kidnapping, enlisting and paying off some of his connections in the London drug trade. The few thousand pounds he spent were as nothing stacked against what he was going to lose.”

“But—why would he do that?” Xanda asked. “And how did Dame Meredith know Lord Lislelivet was behind the kidnapping?”

“It may be hard for you or anyone normal to understand, but Ralph was livid when the child was born. There was probably a lot of plain old jealousy behind this reaction. His mother—meaning, the woman who had raised him, the then Lady Lislelivet—had been barren all her adult life and was thought to be well past her childbearing years. I am certain it never entered Ralph's mind there might one day be competition for him, the only child of this couple. That he might be given a brother, when suddenly new medical techniques allowed this baby to come along with the potential to snatch away the title from twenty-year-old Ralph. For the woman who had raised Ralph believed he bore no trace of the Lislelivet bloodline, and his father knew of course that the boy he had raised as his son was illegitimate. The parents' joy at this new arrival—the legitimate heir, mind—must have been enormous. Like Elizabeth in the Bible, who thought she was barren and who greeted her miraculous pregnancy with such happiness.

“But then … the parents both started to think in terms of how they were locked into this deception, a deception that was no longer necessary. Remember, she had only pretended to have given birth to Ralph. A real heir existed now. A real fifteenth earl of Lislelivet. Could they legally undo what had been done?

“This idea Ralph Percival could not bear. What if his parents went so far as to tell the truth, at least so far as Lady Lislelivet knew it—that the woman who had raised him had not given birth to him. Then under the terms of the estate he would be ousted, and his newborn brother inherit. Of course his parents wouldn't toss Ralph out on the street, nothing so melodramatic as that. In fact, Ralph would continue to live in what to most of the world was unthought-of splendor, riding his horse around the rolling green hills of the estate. But he wouldn't inherit the title, and he wouldn't be able to pass it on to his heirs. He wouldn't be able to enjoy the pomp and ceremony, the bowing and scraping, to which he was entitled as the fifteenth earl.

“So he did what any lunatic would do. Cold-bloodedly, cold-heartedly, but probably also in a mindless fit of jealousy and pique, he arranged to have the baby kidnapped. I don't think he knew or cared what happened to the child—it may have been spirited out of the country and put up for adoption somewhere where few questions would be asked. Once the baby was legally declared dead, Ralph could reign unchallenged—he remained the fifteenth earl of Lislelivet in place of his brother. His mother, the woman who raised him, died shortly afterwards, preceded in death by her husband, the fourteenth earl. The only living witness to the entire scheme, and the only person who suspected Ralph of complicity in his brother's too-convenient disappearance, was his birth mother, Dame Meredith, who years before had taken the veil. But even she could not really grasp that her own son was capable of such an evil deed. Certainly she had no sense of danger when she asked him to come and visit her. She was dying anyway—who would harm her? A sick woman with weeks to live, at best?

“Unfortunately the answer was her own son would try to harm her. Her very own flesh and blood. The boy she had dotingly treated as her nephew, never telling him the truth, telling herself that she had secured his fortune with this deception. But the deception and the fact she had evaded scandal—had evaded ownership of the wrong she had done to her own sister—that weighted more heavily with every passing year.