An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (143 page)

She had hardly been in hiding more than a few seconds when she heard the rustle of someone coming upstairs. The landing was lit only by two guttering candles, but it was light enough for Caroline to see whom she had expected to see. Hester Miller!

The woman was moving on tiptoe and there was something almost snakelike in the way she crept stealthily along, her shoulders hunched as if by being half bowed she was more likely to escape detection. She reached the head of the stairs, then turned and hurried down the corridor which led to her room.

Caroline waited for some minutes then at length, when she was certain there was no chance of Mrs. Miller returning, she came from her hiding-place. Quickly she descended the stairs. Only when she reached the Great Hall did she realise that she was trembling and that her, heart was thumping so noisily against her breast that it was hard for her to breathe.

She did not pause until she found herself at the Library door. Then only did fear make her hesitant and she knew that her hand was shaking as she turned the handle. Very slowly she opened the door.

Though otherwise the room was in darkness the fire was still burning and it was easy to see in the light of the flickering flames. Caroline had always hated this room and now it seemed to her there was a definite sense of lurking evil within it, so that it was with an effort she forced herself to cross the threshold.

Already her mind had anticipated what she would find, but what she saw was more horrifying than anything she had visualised. Lying by Lord Brecon’s desk was the body of a boy. As Caroline drew nearer to him, she recognised him instantly.

It was Gervase Warlingham’s sharp-faced tiger who had struck the horse and whom Vane had threatened to thrash earlier in the day. He was lying face downwards on the floor. He wore no coat and his shirt, torn in tatters from his back, was soaked in blood. The flesh was broken and bleeding and criss-crossed with a hundred weals. Involuntarily Caroline gave a little cry and then she saw lying on the floor beside the boy a riding-whip. There was no mistaking it. It was the one Vane always carried and it was red with blood.

But that was not all. Scattered round the boy, one lying within the grasp of his outstretched hand, were four other dead bodies.

They lay there with their little feet bent, their wings broken and the cage where the budgerigars had fluttered and chirped stood open and empty.

14

For several moments Caroline could not move. She felt as if she were paralysed and could only stand there staring, her very heart appeared to have ceased beating.

Suddenly she was free from her own terrible inertia. She turned and fled from the room, running as swiftly as her feet and the hampering folds of her robe would let her. She shut the Library door behind her and sped down the passage. Only as she reached the staircase and began to climb it, at first swiftly and then more slowly, did her brain once again take control over her scattered senses and by the time she reached the landing she was breathing more normally and the blood was coming back into her white cheeks.

Sternly she told herself that this was no moment for feminine vapours. She had expected something drastic to happen. Now that it had occurred, she had got to find within herself the strength to meet it. Only for a second did she feel faint and sick as she thought of that, still body with the blood stained scars across its back and of the birds, which had fluttered so prettily but a few hours earlier, lying stiff and lifeless on the carpet.

Gripping her, fingers together, digging her nails into the soft palms of her hands in a tremendous effort of self-control, Caroline forced herself to think and to think clearly. Swiftly she walked down the passage to Vane’s room. When she reached the door, she paused, then knocked softly, half afraid that someone other than Vane might hear the sound.

There was no answer and Caroline, not wishing to knock again, turned the handle and walked in. The candles were lit on the bureau at which Vane was sitting at the far end of the room. Caroline did not speak but crossed the room to his side. As she drew nearer, she saw that he was asleep in the high-backed writing chair. He had taken off his coat, but he still wore his oyster-tinted waistcoat over his frilled and starched shirt. In front of him was an unfinished letter, but the quill had fallen from his hand to the floor. Caroline thought that he must have sat back to think what else to write and had, fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion. The strain and tension of the last two days had taken their toll even of his great strength. For a moment she did not wake him, but stood looking at his face in the light of the candles.

He looked so young, so very young, and it was perhaps for the first time that she had even seen an expression of untroubled peace on his face. The corners of his mouth were curved as if he were about to smile and there was something child-like and vulnerable in his closed eyes and the way his head was turned against the soft velvet of the chair.

Caroline had an overwhelming impulse to put her arms round him and hold him close, to draw his head to her bosom and to protect him. She knew in that moment her first awakening to maternity, the first overwhelming flood of tenderness which motherhood brings eventually to every woman. Then sternly she set her feelings aside and remembered only that every minute was of extreme urgency.

“Vane!” she called softly, and again, “Vane!”

He stirred and his eyes opened, looking up into hers.

“Caroline, my sweet darling,” he murmured in a soft voice, as if he had expected her to be there and she was but part of his dream. Then he was wide awake. “What has happened?” he asked. “Why are you here?”

Caroline pat out her hands and slipped them into his.

“Listen, Vane,” she said and in a low voice which only trembled slightly she told him what lay below.

When she had finished speaking, he got to his feet,

“I will go and see,” he said. “Stay here.”

“Do not touch him,” Caroline said. ‘And promise me that before you take any action you will come back to me. I have an idea of what we must do but hurry, Vane, and see for yourself, for there is, no time to be lost.”

He obeyed her and she stood at the open door of his bedchamber watching him disappear down the Grand Staircase and waiting, her hand to her heart, until he returned. As he came back into the room only a few minutes later it seemed to Caroline as if he had grown immeasurably older. The expression on his face was dark and there was something else too, an air of despondency about him as if he accepted the inevitable and had ceased to fight.

“It was as you said,” he remarked heavily, and without apology threw himself down into one of the armchairs in front of the dying fire.

“What shall we do?” Caroline asked, her voice hardly above a whisper.

“Nothing,” he replied. “If, as you, say, Hester Miller is involved in this, she will doubtless wait until the housemaids going into the Library to pull the curtains discover the corpse. They will then rush screaming to Mrs. Miller who, shocked and astonished, will send for the village constable.”

“Yes, yes, I collect all that,” Caroline said impatiently, “but what steps shall we take to circumvent it?”

“Steps? What steps can we take?” Lord Brecon asked. “There is no possible place where we can hide the body so that it will not be found. You can be sure that Gervase will see there is a hue and cry after the boy. It is a clever plot. You were right, Caroline, about Gervase, if that is any satisfaction to you.”

Caroline put her hands to her forehead.

“I have, it,” she said. “Uncle Francis is at Knole. You told me so yourself yesterday. I will send for him.”

“He will doubtless come anyway in due course, in order to arrest me,” Lord Brecon said with a twist of his lips.

“We must avoid that above all things, at any rate until we have some evidence that you were not involved in this crime. Actually you must have been with me at the time the wretched boy was murdered.”

“As my wife,” Lord Brecon interrupted, “any evidence you give on my behalf would be more or less discredited.”

“Yes, yes, I know that,” Caroline said, “but there may be others to speak for you.”

“And who may they be?”

“I sent a message this very eve to a friend of mine,” Caroline said, “but Vane, there is no time to tell you who it was. You must get away from here at once!”

“Run away? Why should I?”

There was scorn in Lord Brecon’s voice and looking into his eyes, Caroline suddenly gave an exclamation, then knelt beside his chair and put her arms around him.

“Listen, Vane, my darling,” she said. “You have got to trust me in this if you have trusted me in nothing before. I have a feeling deep within myself that we shall find a way out of this sorry coil, that we shall clear your name and free you from all future danger but I cannot convince you in words because conviction lies only within my heart and comes of my belief in the mercy of God. Trust me, darling, because I love you, and do what I wish. Please, Vane.”

“And what do you desire me’ to do?” Lord Brecon asked and now his voice was less bitter and it seemed to Caroline as if the hardness in his eyes had lightened.

“I want you to take the swiftest horse in your stable and go at once to Mandrake,” Caroline said. “we will send a groom at the same time to Uncle Francis and ask him to come here with all possible speed. There is still justice in England, Vane, and I do not believe that they will hang an innocent man.”

“You think that by running away I shall prove my innocence?” Lord Brecon questioned.

“It is not a question of running away,” Caroline retorted, “for I shall tell Uncle Francis where you are. It is just that I do not wish us to play our parts exactly as Gervase and Mrs. Miller must have planned them. They know you are here, and as you have said yourself, they will be ready in the morning, when the body is discovered, to send for the constable. Let us disconcert them in the only way we can. If you are missing -or at least, if you prefer it, away from the Castle - it gives us time to think, to make enquiries, to find out if my friend, the one to whom I sent a message this evening, has a different tale to tell from the one which has been prepared by Gervaise and his gang of cut-throats.”

Lord Brecon frowned.

“I see your point, Caroline, but no gentleman worthy of the name could leave his wife to face the sordid and unpleasant circumstances of a crime such as this.”

Caroline made a sound that was almost a laugh, and yet it was perilously near to tears.

“Oh, Vane, have we got to worry about conventions at a moment like this? My dear, my very dear, we have been unconventional since the moment we first met! It does not matter to me whether you behave like a gentleman or not, so long as you remember that you are the man I love.”

“Do you indeed love me still?” Lord Brecon asked. “I have brought you nothing but unhappiness and horror since the first moment I came into your life.”

Caroline drew a deep breath.

“Shall I tell you what I was thinking just a few seconds ago while you were downstairs?”

“Yes, tell me.”

“I was thinking that if you rid yourself of me as you have threatened to do, then I shall no longer remain alive, for without you, Vane, life means nothing.”

In answer he pulled her close to him and put his cheek against hers.

“Oh, Caroline,” he said, “I am not worthy of you.”

“There is something else I would say,” Caroline went on. “It is this, Vane that if things go wrong and you are indeed convicted of this dreadful crime which you and I know you have never committed, then we will cross together to the continent. It would not be difficult if you are at Mandrake. In the past countless boats have crossed the Channel from there in secret. Why should you die to please Gervase? And why should I cease to have any desire for life because of the evil machinations of a murderer? We will live together in exile, and for me it would be no hardship so long as I could be with you.”

For a moment Lord Brecon could not speak, and then she saw there were tears in his eyes. Very tenderly he held her close and then at last he said,

“You make me ashamed, Caroline. I can only say that no man could be worthy of such a love or of a woman such as you.”

He got to his feet and drew her from the kneeling position at his side. Very tenderly he put his arms around her and held her close against his breast. He did not kiss her, but his eyes looked over her head as if he were seeing a vision of the future, as if he were considering whether the gates of Paradise would ever open for them both.

It was Caroline who moved first.

“We have so little time, Vane,” she said. “You must be gone before the housemaids rise.”

“I cannot do it, Caroline,” he said.

“But you must, Vane, you must,” she replied almost angrily. “You said you loved me and you know that I love you. Trust me in this one thing, please.”

“And where shall I go?” he asked. “I cannot move about the country chased by the military - a fugitive who will not face up to justice.”

“No, of course not,” Caroline said, “as if I should ask such a thing of you. All I beg is that you go at once to Mandrake and when you get there ask for Newman, my grandfather’s valet. He is an old man, but he knows all the secret parts of the Castle. He could hide a hundred fugitives if need be without anyone being the wiser.”

“And what then?”

“I will bring you word as swiftly as possible,” Caroline answered. “There are only two alternatives, either your name is cleared or else we leave together for the Continent.”

“Caroline, what can I say?” Lord Brecon asked.

He looked for a moment into her eyes and then suddenly he dropped on one knee and raised the hem of her gown to his lips.

“I will do as you want,” he said, “not because I think you are right, dear love, but because I know you to be the bravest and the most wonderful woman in the whole of the world.”

As he rose, Caroline clasped her arms round his neck. For a long moment they stood there, conscious that they were closer in their understanding of each other than they had ever been before. Then Caroline released herself and going to the mantelshelf pulled the bell-rope which hung beside it.