Cavalier Case (25 page)

All the lights had been switched off in the main rooms of the house in order that there should be no distraction from the illumination of the facade. But here, in this remote little room, beyond the rooms where costumes were kept, make-up had been applied, hair frizzled, the windows were heavily shuttered, and the light was on.

Alix, in her plain black "dame's" dress, hair bundled away under her white cap, was holding her head in her hands. "Listen Alix, you've got to help me. I'm terrified of horses, they make me feel so sick, in fact I'm feeling sick already, ghastly, I think it's an allergy, I used to have an allergy to horses as a child, please, please, can we change places? You'd be a wonderful Lady Isabella and I could have a lie-down before I come on as Dame Alice. We were both at the death rehearsal"—in her haste she actually made the Freudian slip—"We know each other's parts."

Alix looked at her sombrely. All she said was: "
You're
feeling sick. That's rich." But she began to pull off the white cap as if she hated it, had hated it all along, so that her hair—she really did have the most glorious hair—spilled down over her back and shoulders. Then she began silently to strip off the black fustian dress.

In spite of her silence, there was something deliberately challenging about the way Alix took off all her clothes down to a pair of white bikini pants and bra at least one size too small. Jemima, seeing her in tennis clothes, had realized already how heavily built, even plump, Alix was, far more of an Adriana than a Charlotte—but hey, wait a minute, how could she, Jemima, be so stupid? Alix was pregnant, visibly pregnant, and what was more, she was making sure that Jemima appreciated the fact.

"Nice for me, isn't it?" said Alix, giving Jemima one of those bright bird-like looks which reminded her of their first encounter. "As it turns out, it is nice for me. Soon I shan't have to pretend any longer. But I don't mind telling you that at first Dan was absolutely furious, he was horrified. To be fair, this is the third time it's happened to him!" Alix laughed shortly. "I could even feel sorry for him—Babs, then Charlotte, then me—except that men like Dan always get what they want, don't they? And the women carry it out. So he must want it, deep down. But he did tell me to get rid of it at first. Naturally I refused: well, I'm nearly thirty-eight you know, nearly as old as Zena. Worse than that, my God, Dan can be a bastard, he actually suggested I should marry Marcus!"

Alix gave another not particularly mirthful laugh. "Desperate for a wife and children! That's what Dan said about Marcus. And the child would be a Meredith after all. He even suggested it to Marcus himself. Said
I
would like it! No wonder Marcus won't speak to me. Here, give me your dress. I don't want the world to see me like this—not just yet. Dan only changed his mind the other day."

Somewhere in the distance there was a long low rumble: not gunfire this time but thunder, unmistakable thunder if not yet much nearer than, say, Taynford Grange. All the same, thunder as forecast. Jemima knew that she had to carry out her plan, not only racing against discovery, but also, equally crucially, racing against the approaching storm. She left Alix with a quick grateful hug. Herself now with her hair bundled into the white cap, and wearing the black dress—the waist was much too big for her but she would not be wearing it for very long—she went in search of her proper guise of invisibility.

A few minutes later, as Alix vanished in the direction of the north court, the green taffeta cloak swishing through the door into the darkened hall, Jemima found what she was looking for.

Zena's "Decimus Ghost" costume was hanging, just as she had hoped, on a hook in the deserted costume store. Zena was not due to put it on for some time—she would play all the early scenes, and her death scene, in her own costume, and of course very different make-up. The "Decimus ghost" costume had had some kind of theatrical phosphorescent stuff sprayed on it, with a view to making Zena's second appearance that much more dramatic to the spectators in the forecourt. But it was just possible Zena could have taken the ghost costume upstairs to her own room. Applying the most ghostly make-up she could manage to her own face, Jemima wondered whether she need bother with the question of the "mutilated" hand of Decimus; in the end she did put her left hand into her pocket. She could always take it out and, unlike Zena (but like Decimus himself), she was right-handed. In any case, impression rather than detail was what was needed here.

There was another rumble of thunder, following a flash of lightning. The storm was still some way away. But it was coming closer. As Jemima, now invisible—in one sense—as the Decimus Ghost, passed in her turn, through the connecting door into the darkness of the great hall, she felt extraordinarily nervous.

This apprehension was not due to the absence of light, although in the hall a total black-out was absolutely essential to preserve the quality of the
son et lumiere
outside and that made her own costume glow in quite an eerie fashion. Nor was it due to a torrid atmosphere. Here, the sultry heat outside had hardly penetrated; the Great Hall of Lackland Court with its high ceiling was probably the coolest place in Taynfordshire. It was not even evoked by the prospect of her mission: for Jemima, having taken the decision to carry it out, did not allow herself at this point to think about what would happen if she failed. (Anymore than she intended to digest at this point Alix's astonishing revelation—was she implying that Dan would marry her? Ah well, as Macbeth said, there would be a time for such a word . . .).

No, she was in thrall to some strange feeling of nervosity, compounded of the tensions within the Meredith family, the impending drama which would—if she had her way—tear it apart and certainly reverberate publicly in a way that would make previous public manifestations of the Cavalier Case seem tame.

Nevertheless she had to go on, and she had to go up to the roof. And she had to go soon. Marcus, as Sir Bartleby Potter, was due to ride by, down below, at the head of a posse of his Puritan men any minute; he would issue the first armed challenge to Lackland Court, on the eve of the Battle of Taynford. Jemima knew his timescale only too well, and it was a timescale which was vital to her plan. She had committed the whole of the action of the Cavalier Celebration to memory, not only her own part. And Marcus' first appearance had also been the subject of much discussion. In truth, Sir Bartleby Potter had not been in the Taynford area in 1645, nor had he fought at the Battle of Taynford.

"But we need to
establish
you, Marcus, so you can die later with some dignity," exclaimed Rupert.

"Go on, be a goody boy, Markie, get on your horse as told and die for your King and Country; I mean your Parliament and Country, but that's appropriate enough." That was Dan. Marcus had not acknowledged the intervention of either man. But he had finally agreed when Zena had pleaded with him, her sense of history dominated on this occasion, it seemed, by her need to please Rupert Durham.

Jemima had to be up on the roof before Marcus appeared.

She took out the torch she had brought from the car. The oddest thing about the Great Hall was the absence of the portrait of Decimus at the top of the stairs—or rather the absence of the picture light which normally illuminated it. The portrait itself had been moved. It was now established on an enormous easel in front of the great doors. With his public in mind, Dan had agreed to the move; and Zena, who might otherwise have demurred, was, as before, putty in the hands of Rupert. It was planned that at the climax of the Celebration—after the din and shouting of the Lackland siege assault—the great doors would be flung open, spotlights would play upon the portrait, and Zena, in her second role of the ghost, would then "emerge" in her glowing phosphorescent costume, and come to the rescue of the beleaguered Meredith supporters.

"The ghost strikes back!" had been how Dave Smith had entitled that particular tableau. 

All that was some time ahead. In the mean time the portrait, in its new position, lay in darkness. Jemima needed to find the door to the Long Gallery, which was shut—the cast members already on the roof had gone up, and would ultimately come down, by another staircase leading from the back quarters of the house. She shone her small torch quickly upwards: the gap left behind where the portrait had hung—for how many years? centuries?—looked cavernous. But it was of course only plain flat wooden panelling. She then speedily moved her torch away to find the door to the Long Gallery. There was a flash of lightning which lit the hall for an instant through the big windows, and almost immediately a further rumble of thunder. It sounded virtually overhead. But as Rupert's voice rolled on beautifully, sonorously, inexorably, through the loudspeakers—he was reading one of the "Swan" poems at this point to accompany Alix's arrival as Lady Isabella—the rain must have held off.

A second flash of lightning followed, in this case accompanied directly by its own mighty burst of thunder. It was at this moment, out of the corner of her eye, that jemima caught sight of Zena, in her first Decimus costume, passing downstairs. She saw her rather than heard her, because the noise of the thunder—and some increased shouting from outside—effectively muffled the noise of Zena's footsteps. For an instant, Jemima was surprised—surely Zena must have made her first entrance by now, unless she had mistaken the entire timescale of the Celebration. But then she saw that Zena had secured another dog—had replaced the vanished Kylie with an animal who looked in fact rather more like the dog in the portrait. Zena seemed to be holding his collar with her right hand. Jemima, who had no wish to be seen by Zena (or the dog), shrank back.

A moment later she was in the Long Gallery on her way to the roof. Ignoring the portraits, Jemima did decide to cast a quick look out of the long windows. Judging from the audience, who could be seen
in situ
, there was still, unbelievably, no rain. Would the storm really pass over and break elsewhere? The sinister rumblings continued. Oh, spirit of Decimus, she incanted, let the rain hold off till I reach the roof.

She found the key in its now familiar position beneath the Rev Thomas's portrait and ran lightly up the spiral staircase. She knew who would be up there.

"The Ghost!" Nell Meredith's frantic scream, as she backed away from Jemima, looking with particular horror towards her silvery costume, her gloved black hand, occurred one second before the expected colossal downpour of rain began to swamp the ancient gutters of the roof with water as if this was some Taynfordshire monsoon. Below, the noise and confusion was appalling: drum beats mixed with the continuing sound of the thunder, the crashing of spectators trying to run out of the crowded stands, Rupert Durham's voice, still sonorous as he called through the loudspeaker for calm and orderly departure, while, most incongruously, the loud recorded jingly singing of the Psalms (in a seventeenth-century setting) to which Sir Bartleby Potter's men were intended to march in true Puritan fashion, suddenly came in on cue, giving a bizarre ecclesiastical twist to the whole nightmare.

Then the illuminations suddenly went out. It must have been the lightning striking the controls—but that was only realised later, when it no longer mattered. At the time many of the audience gave way to fruitless anger: even on the roof Jemima could hear their outraged cries, once the Psalm-singing had come to an abrupt stop. All the same, she had no time to spare for what might be happening down below. Across the now slippery roof, clinging to one of the turrets, she advanced towards Nell Meredith.

"So tall," said Nell uncertainly. "So tall—but you're not—" Nell put her hand to her head, pushing the velvet cap back so that the brave Antony Decimus feather curled over her eyes.

"The smell," she said. "It was you—
you
came—you hit me—
you
tried to kill me—" She screamed again, but this time, in the grip of the thunderstorm, no one could hear, no-one but the other member of the cast there on the roof, the person to whom Nell had turned and whom she was beating with her fists.

"You," she kept screaming. "You, you, you ..." The rain pelted down on her furious anguished face, a child's face transfixed with adult hatred. So fierce was her attack that for one moment Jemima thought that Nell would actually force her companion, in her weighty black velvet dress rapidly becoming sodden with water, over the edge of the parapet. Thus she would have gone to her death, grimly but appropriately, just as Haygarth had gone to his. And that in its own way would have been poetic justice.

It might also, leaving aside Nell's responsibility, have been the kindest solution to the future life—and punishment—of the murderess Charlotte Lackland.

Decimus Goes Home

The telephone rang in the Holland Park Mansions flat just as Jemima was getting out of the bath. She picked it up without thinking before the answering machine caught it. It was Cass. He was lucky—in the sense that she would not have returned his call had he merely reached the machine. All that was over, well and truly over, unlike the Cavalier Case itself, which was finished for her but in no way finished in the public imagination. First there was a trial to come. Then in that cheerful cauldron of speculation, fed by the
Daily Exclusive
and even the magisterial
Jupiter
, details of the case would continue to bubble and bubble over for many years to come and maybe even generations. 

It was after all a story that had everything: sex and sport (the involvement of Dan and Alix, his flame-haired tennis-playing mistress, had inevitably emerged), violence and the supernatural. (There was no way that the Phantom Cavalier was going to be forgotten, even though the two witnesses to Jemima's final apparition, Nell and Charlotte, were both, if for different reasons, likely to be forever silent on the subject). Then there was snobbery—plenty of Lords and Ladies to play with, including a pretty young Viscountess who was up on a charge of murder—and last of all there was historical romance: if Lackland Court ever opened to the public, instead of existing as a country club, it was likely to prove a major tourist attraction. Yes, the Cavalier Case really was the story that had everything. It might one day in legal terms be finished. But it would never be forgotten.