Cavalier Case (8 page)

"Alix Carstairs." Jemima did not believe in the putting down of functionaries by the forgetting of their names, nor for that matter for the colour of their hair (was not her own distinctly reddish' Corn-coloured, as Cass sometimes described it, but red to others).

To Jemima's relief, Jane Manfred led the way through the empty "Royal Court" (so embarrassingly visible to spectators in the bar through its vast plate glass window) and through two more courts to the fourth and last in the sequence. The second court was labelled "Agincourt," and the third "Crecy" and their own "Black Prince." Both "Agincourt" and "Crecy" were occupied, the one by a girl coach and a small boy, the other by two men, who looked like Arab princes out of uniform, playing an energetic singles. The courts, draped in green plastic along the walls, were a good deal less elegant than the reception area, for all their great names—and in marked contrast in style to that future country club, mellow and gracious Lackland Court. Inwardly, Jemima shuddered at the thought of an invasion of green plastic into Decimus' world.

There was no other way, it turned out, to reach "Black Prince" other than by processing through the first three courts. As they processed, Jane Manfred continued to chat vivaciously to Jemima. The coach accepted the interruption with a smile and wave to Lady Manfred.

Hi, Jane! Good game!" she called out cheerfully. The "Arab princes," on the other hand, one of whom was delivering a bullet-like serve more or less at his opponent's head as Jemima and Lady Manfred passed, were both visibly and audibly disgruntled at the interruption.

There was a shout. "Would you guys mind waiting when the ball's in play?" The accent was heavily American. Jemima could not see that the bullet-like serve would ever have fallen within the service area; nevertheless she felt embarrassed.

But Jane Manfred, with a style that Jemima could not help admiring, paid no attention to either greeting, friendly or unfriendly. She simply continued to discourse—now on the subject of English history—in her low but richly carrying voice, a thrilling mezzo- soprano from one who had been trained—where? Poland? Vienna? There was something about Jane Manfred's elegance, the smoothness of her bone structure, which suggested Poland to Jemima; her feeling for luxury on the other hand was distinctly Viennese. Or was Jemima simply thinking of Cy?

"These historical names, darling, for the courts, my idea, so amusing. I love your history."

A few minutes later, the need to concentrate on scoring even a handful of points against Lady Manfred drove all reflections concerning history out of her head. Jemima had somehow imagined from Jane Manfred's appearance, her broad hips and full bosom, discernible soft shapes more discernible in her tennis dress than beneath the elegance of her Chanel suit, that she would play tennis like a stately galleon in full sail ... it proved a singularly inappropriate analogy. In fact she played like an athletic well-trained man with a gammy leg.

That is to say she hit every shot, forehand and backhand, with remarkable, one had to say masculine, strength and a more or less unerring eye for the place Jemima (by no means a slow runner) would be unable to reach. And her serve seemed to Jemima quite as bullet-like as that of the "Arab prince," while seeking out strange corners of the service area which Jemima once again found difficult to reach. Should Jemima, however, manage to deliver or return a ball to any spot on the court more than a few feet away from her opponent—that is to say, out of reach of the formidable swinging punishing racket—Jane Manfred made absolutely no effort to retrieve it.

She simply stood stock still and directed towards Jemima an ironic smile that had more than a hint of a reproach about it, a suggestion that someone with Jemima's "long English legs" and twenty years'—at least—advantage in age, should not indulge in such gratuitously aggressive play.

So Lady Manfred's Cleopatra-like earrings hardly moved in her ears and Jemima Shore, after twenty-five minutes of play, found herself losing 1-5. (The only game she did win was the result of her rushing desperately to net and volleying Lady Manfred's fierce drives; a technique which incurred even more gentle reproach from her opponent: "Now, that sort of shot, darling, I could never get.") All in all, as Jemima told Cass afterwards, the sudden unheralded arrival of Dan Lackland at the doorway to "Black Prince" was by no means unwelcome.

Without preamble, Dan Lackland spoke directly to Jane Manfred.

There's been a disaster," he said. "Haygarth's dead. The old butler at Lackland. They just reached me. It was a fall apparently. Unbelevably, he fell off the battlements. What on earth was he doing up there, and at night? I've been talking to the police. They—well, they're asking a lot of questions. Accident? They won't say. I have a ghastly feeling they're hinting at suicide. And it is true that he did suddenly become very depressed. Retirement—well, I suppose it's inevitable after so many years. All the same, to go and fling yourself off the roof! Christ!" He broke off. "Look, you can understand. I have to go back there immediately." Dan Lackland suddenly focused on Jemima, who was still standing, one tennis ball in her hand, for her second serve. "Ah, Jemima Shore. And, yes, the gutter press are there too."

"
The Press
? Already? Why?" Jemima hardly considered herself in the category of the gutter press but she was too busy taking in what Dan Lackland had just told them to make the point.

"You tell me why they're there. Charlotte's trying very hard to hold the fort but the trouble is that Nell, my daughter Nell, she seems to have found him, or at any rate seen him. And she's talking all the time about the ghost. Amusing, isn't it? Your ghost programme and now this. Little Nell is talking all the time to the gutter press about the Decimus Ghost and how the ghost killed Haygarth. Pushed him off the battlements!" But Dan Lackland neither sounded nor looked as if he found it at all amusing.

"But that
is
a disaster!" echoed Jane Manfred. She dropped her racket and running swiftly towards Dan—more swiftly than she had moved through the whole tennis game—she embraced him. "A disaster for everybody! Most of all, of course," she added quickly, "for the poor butler."

The word "disaster" hung heavily between the three of them. Most of all, a disaster for Haygarth: that was true enough. Another old man had died at Lackland Court, and died as a result of a violent fall, conceivably suicide. But a disaster also for Dan Lackland and the Lackland Country Club? It was possible. Anything was possible where the ramifications of a public disaster—in the Press sense—were concerned. Much less importantly as it seemed, the death of Haygarth might turn out to be a disaster for the Decimus Ghost programme— but of the three of them still awkwardly standing within the "Black Prince" tennis court, Jermma Shore guessed she was the only one thinking of the programme.

What would be seen long afterwards was that with the death of Havgarth and the arrival of what Dan Lackland called the gutter press (but others might term the tabloids) the Cavalier Case had begun in earnest.

Mission To Frighten

The Decimus Ghost was frightened: how ironic that a ghost should feel frightened! Such a feeling was surely not in the ghosts' charter. Or was it too close to cockcrow? Then traditionally ghosts had to vanish. In fact it was only three o'clock: the clock in the gatehouse just chimed its familiar note, sonorous and cracked (although it had actually only sounded twice, being too venerable to adapt to summer time).

But it was not entirely dark. It had never been entirely black throughout the sultry summer's night. As the Decimus Ghost looked out of the windows of the Long Gallery, processing through it from the little battlement staircase, the lawns outside were dark and shadowed rather than the ultimate black of winter's night. The ghost had better move fast . . . courage ...

The face of the sleeping girl was turned towards the window as the ghost entered her room; quite silently, since the door was partly ajar. Her bundle of curly hair, lying across the pillow, was tangled and slightly damp in the heat. She was wearing a white cotton nightie, slightly ragged like most of her clothes. There were no fastenings: the ghost could see her small breasts, with their tiny puckered nipples. Nell Meredith dreaming had a certain beguiling sensuality, a young girl painted by Balthus perhaps, or her slightly older sister. Sleep had ironed out the sadness or petulance from her pointed little face and replaced it with something more innocently open.

But the ghost was not interested in sensual experiences—as ghosts should not be. The Decimus Ghost had a mission, a proper ghost's mission. You could call it a mission to frighten. The Decimus Ghost, in short, wanted to make quite sure that there would be no repetition of Nell Meredith's inconvenient behaviour following the butler's death. Some thought had been addressed to the subject of making quite sure. Perhaps that hysterical babbling to the sympathetic young woman who turned out to be a journalist from the Daily Exclusive had been a natural reaction to shock. Certainly it was a maddening coincidence that Nell of all people should arrive in the chapel garden just after the girl gardener had discovered the body. The girl gardener alone—no connection to the family—would have created far less trouble. Natural reaction to shock, maybe—for all that, the ghost suspected that Nell had thoroughly enjoyed the attention following her revelations.

What was that new government policy towards young offenders called, a while back.7 There had been a lot of fuss about it; then the fuss had died down as fusses of this sort usually did, in favour of the next fuss. A short sharp shock—that was it. The perfect phrase, whatever the demerits of the policy. The Decimus Ghost intended to give Little Nell Meredith a short sharp shock. The ghost extended a hand. The deep lace cuff which fell back from the black glove did not rob the glove itself of its air of menace, as, casting a faint shadow in the greyish light from the window, it hovered over the face of the sleeping girl.

At that moment Nell Meredith opened both her eyes, wide. For one instant she stared up without blinking at the shape looming above her, the outline of the plumed hat just discernible against the window, 'hen she shut her eyes again.

Throughout this time—which seemed like eternity to the intruder ut could not in fact have lasted longer than two or three seconds—the Decimus Ghost remained arrested over the girl, quite motionless, hand still outstretched. For a moment too there was not even the sound of breathing in the bedroom. Then, as the ghost drew back the gloved hand and backed silently away, there was a sound of exhalation. Nell at least was breathing again. After a while, as the ghost stood at the doorway, her breathing became soft and regular. If you had entered the room for the first time at this point, you would have confidently imagined the girl to have been fast asleep.

But the Decimus Ghost was not under any such comforting illusion. Nell was merely pretending to be asleep, that was unpleasantly clear. By faking sleep now, she was trying to establish, ostrich-fashion, that she had never been awake, that the fatal—as it might prove—clear upward glance of her wide apart brown eyes in the direction of the ghost had never taken place.

The question was: what had she seen? Or rather, what would she make of what she had seen? The information could prove rather important for the lifespan of the Decimus Ghost (if a ghost could have a lifespan, maybe timespan was a better word) or even, to put it another grimmer way, for the lifespan of Little Nell. But the ghost did not want to put it like that. In fact, would not dream of putting it like that. That sort of thought was absolutely out of the question. The whole Decimus plan was working out so well, was it not? If only that wretched man Haygarth had kept his mouth shut! Instead of intending to tell jemima Shore not only what he had seen but what he had worked out for himself, what he had come to understand. But Haygarth had been an old man; like his late master. No point in spilling too many tears over him. One had to be realistic about these things: the death of the old was all part of the cycle—the cycle of history.

Little Nell was a very different matter. She simply had to be punished, firmly but not unkindly punished, for all those newspaper headlines. Warned might even be a better word than punished. And her mouth had to be shut for the future. In a manner of speaking: only in a manner of speaking. She must simply be persuaded not to tell. That is, if she knew who the ghost was—beyond being Decimus. 

"Who are you:" I won't tell." The clear, small voice from the bed was so uncannily accurate in echoing the ghost's own thoughts, that for a moment it was the ghost—the ghost on a mission to frighten—not the girl who was startled. Then a mild kind of bitterness followed.

"I won't tell!" That was all very well, reflected the Decimus Ghost. But did someone who had given a full sensational story to the Daily Cluek'ss—quickly copied and embellished by other hounds on the trail—really have a right to say: "I won't tell"?

The Clueless (as the 
Exclusive
was generally known), which on this issue had shown itself not really so clueless after all and in any case respected the laws of libel if only because an alternative course in the past had proved expensive—had begun comparatively mildly. Rather unpleasant prominence was given to the fact that the butler had just been retired by the Meredith family after "years of faithful service": even if Haygarth's age might have been thought to make that inevitable, there was at least a whiff of reproach about his treatment. But Nell's "own story" as told to an
Exclusive
reporter, was first run under the headline MY PHANTOM CAVALIER. Here, far more prominence was given to Nell Meredith's alleged frequent sightings of a romantically handsome "phantom Cavalier" up and down and roundabout her stately home (and its equally stately battlements) than to the phantom's alleged threats. Although these threats were mentioned, they were carefully quoted in Nell's own words ("They say the phantom brings death especially to our family but I knew he would never harm me"); the threats were not coupled explicitly with the death of the old Lord Lackland following one fall nor with the recent death of his butler following another.

Other papers, subsequently, were less restrained. 'THE GHOST AND THE GIRL' screamed one headline, followed by 'LITTLE NELL'S PHANTOM BEAU', and most lurid of all: TEENAGER SEES HEADLESS GHOST "KILLER.' (For somewhere along the line in this story the ghost had lost his handsome head or at any rate tucked it under his arm. ) Most ominous all for the future, however, was the treatment of the story in the sober
Jupiter,
coming up fast on the rails as the paper of record. It was the
Jupiter
, for example, who first came up with the headline 'THE CAVALIER CASE'. And that after all was the headline which stuck.

The story that followed, although written in that quirkily authoritative style the Jupiter was making its own, contained in fact all the elements of a romantic Cavalier ghost appearing to a young girl, presaging death, which had so titilated readers of the
Clueless
. And there was a very fine photograph of Nell Meredith gazing upwards, her face half in the shadow of a battlement: for the
Jupiter's
quirkily brilliant photographs were also establishing their own authoritative style. Moreover it was the Jupiter which introduced the true historical dimension to it all, for to the conventional photographs of Handsome Dan Meredith, tousled and desirable at the height of his tennis career, used by the tabloids, the Jupiter added a large reproduction of the Decimus portrait from the National Portrait Gallery with the "Cavalier Ghost" caption and beneath it: "Is this what she saw?" A short description of Decimus' career and achievements followed the work of Dr. Rupert Durham of Casey College, Cambridge.

It was, however, what came next on the page, rather than this sober assessment, which really boosted the Decimus story. This was a separate article by one D. ]. Smith, described as "a leading historian of the Civil War in Taynfordshire" (of whom no-one had previously heard including the normally knowledgeable Dr. Rupert Durham). It was D. J. Smith who gave an account of the siege of Lackland, including "the local tradition" that the ghost of Decimus Lackland had come to the aid of his beloved wife "Lady Olivia." So far, so good: but D. J. Smith also repeated the story—another "local tradition"—that Decimus' body had earlier been snatched from the chapel by his mistress, the notorious beauty Lady Isabella Clare, and interred secretly somewhere else.

Although this second local tradition directly contradicted the unalloyed devotion Decimus was supposed to have felt for his beloved wife, this fact did not appear to worry that hitherto-unknown local historian D. J. Smith. And it did enable the Jupiter to print another fine picture from the National Portrait Gallery: that of Lady Isabella Clare as St. Agnes. Gazing at her slightly foxy little face, that big pair of exophthalmic eyes above the matching pair of equally globular breasts revealed by her shepherdess' dress, a little white lamb posed suggestively in her lap, long be-ribboned crook to one side, readers of the Jupiter had no need to feel themselves left out of the delights of Page Three in the papers of lesser record.

It was several days before the bemused (and besieged) Meredith family at Lackland discovered that D. J. Smith was in fact none other than Dave, the enterprising ex-student brother of their girl gardener, Cathy Smith, whose self-created credentials as a local historian were now considerably enhanced.

In all this the police had remained publicly silent. They were, said a representative of the Taynfordshire Constabulary, making investigations, pursuing their enquiries and so forth. Was the Haygarth case being treated as acccidental death or suicide? No straightforward answer to that one; just more talk of pursuing enquiries, making investigations . . . The anodyne predictable official phrases did of course nothing to allay the intense interest which now surrounded the butler's death. Nor for that matter did the coroner's inquest, opened and duly adjourned, at the request of the police. Could it in fact be an accident? If so, what was the butler doing at night up on those dangerous battlements? Had he really killed himself, heartbroken at the idea of retirement? Was it even possible—delicious menacing thought—that he had been frightened to death by a phantom Cavalier?

The ghost thought momentarily that if there was a general mission to frighten, then haunting Dave Smith might be rather fun: getting into that small house in the village street lived in by the Smith parents would be comparatively easy since they had built on a pretentious conservatory, more suited to a stately home than a terraced house, at the back . . . Maybe something a little bit more positive than haunting . . . "D. J. Smith, leading local historian of the Civil War" might live to regret those vivid stories he had spun, especially about Lady Isabella Clare . . .

Then the ghost heard the sleepy cry of a child, also on the upper floor but from the other side of the wide staircase which led up from below to the floor where the various Meredith children slept. The ghost was alarmed. This was a complication. If the cry was from the boy Dessie, the cries were liable to get louder and become continuous. Someone—one hoped—would soon come and attend to the cries. And the cries were starting to get louder. It was time for the ghost to be gone, as silently as it had come. Had the mission to frighten been accomplished or accomplished in part? Only the future—Nell's future behaviour in short—would show. No time to linger now.

The ghost padded away by the route it used on these nocturnal visitations. The problem originally had been the safe storage of the Decimus costume including the boots, the boots with their rubber soles. In the days of the previous Lord Lackland, the house, lacking effective female supervision for many years, had been quite a rundown and ramshackle place with plenty of dark and dusty corners. But although the old Lord, safe in the embrace of the whisky bottle after darkness fell, would hardly have noticed if he had stumbled over a regiment of Cavaliers, Haygarth had been another matter. Loyal to his master and possessive about the house and its furnishings, little escaped his eye in that direction—except dust itself. And even the disturbance of the dust had constituted another danger: for Haygarth might not reckon dust sufficiently to instruct the daily women to remove it, but he would certainly have noticed footmarks.

The discovery of a kind of cubby hole which could be locked, behind one of the odd sixteenth-century chimney pots on the roof, had been providential. One or two brushes stored there looked as if they dated back to the same period—some antique method of chimney cleaning perhaps? No doubt they should by rights be transferred to the Victoria & Albert Museum, and maybe they would be one day, but for the time being, the antique apparently mouldering brushes served admirably to conceal the costume in its black plastic wrappings. All this, however, was in the old days, when the ghost had not been all that active, had not needed to be in fact, except for rehearsals and the ultimate successful daring coup.

Even then, though, the ghost should perhaps have identified another potential troublemaker beyond Haygarth in the shape of Nell, so inconveniently dumped at Lackland by her irresponsible mother - and what a tiresome woman she had become! To sort her out would also be a pleasure - but no, the thing must not grow. Although it was tempting, the ghost could see that, to act the ghost in all sorts of ways, a wonderful foolproof way of carrying out all sorts of vengeances . . . but the ghost had made a solemn vow at the beginning. The thing must not grow.