Destroying Angel (18 page)

‘We should get out now, before the ceiling collapses,’ I said and Wolf took my arm, steadying me.

‘What are you talking about, Rose?’

‘Look around you – you can see – another earth tremor weakened the foundations.’

Collins remained on the floor beside Hubert, dabbing at his chest. ‘Someone should take him to the hospital. He’s been badly injured.’

The giant bear had been pushed over and now lay on its side, as if asleep, Hubert’s blood on its claws.

Collins regarded us tearfully. ‘We were warned this would happen, after the pit closed.’

A very bewildered Sergeant Sloan held up his hand. ‘A moment, miss. A moment, if you please. We met two men tearing out of the house, yelling about an earthquake, but I can assure you that there is no sign of any earth tremor outside.’

Kate appeared at the door, sleepy-eyed. ‘What is happening?’ And before anyone could tell her she ran across to Hubert and screamed, ‘Is he dead?’

Everyone shouted together, trying to explain. And Mrs Robson, who had rushed out while we were talking, now appeared again breathless and looking round in bewilderment as the dust settled and we began to see one another clearly again.

‘It was only this one room – nowhere else in the house. I have checked. There isn’t even a cracked ceiling.’

‘You are sure?’

‘I am sure,’ she said firmly.

Three more figures appeared. Two uniformed policemen with Sandeman between them in handcuffs. 

‘What has he to do with all this?’ Collins demanded.

Sloan said, ‘He’s the reason we’re here, and just in time it would seem.’

‘Nothing to do with Mr Staines then?’ quavered Collins.

He shook his head. ‘Only that he has been harbouring a criminal. Sandeman has a police record. He is wanted in Newcastle, Durham and York. A forger under many aliases. We have been trying to track him down for several years and he was here right under our noses.’

To me he said, ‘Now that there is a little calm, can someone tell me what has been going on here?’

Collins said, ‘I can tell you. Hubert, who is engaged to me, was about to force this – this person – to marry him—’ Pointing at me, she managed to make it sound like my fault. ‘I came in the nick of time,’ she added, omitting any mention of the gun she had also carried. ‘He was going to kill her dog—’

I looked at Thane.

‘What happened then?’ asked Sloan.

‘He shook himself, the way dogs do, and then – then the room started to move.’

We all looked at Thane as if expecting an explanation. He stared back at us and, trotting over, sat down obediently by my side.

Sloan shook his head wearily. What was implied seemed impossible, but there was the evidence all round us, a museum of stuffed animals and birds, as if they had been struck by a hurricane.

Other images floated across my mind – the white cattle herd halted before Thane, the way Hubert’s dogs treated him as if invisible, and how he had saved Wolf and me from the white cow deprived of her calf. 

Sloan had turned his attention to Hubert, who lay so still. He looked far from well and the covering of dust added to his deathly pallor.

Sloan briskly gave instructions and we watched as the police van carted him off on a stretcher, with Sandeman handcuffed in the back, protesting his innocence, and Collins protesting that she should be allowed to accompany Hubert to the hospital in Alnwick.

I longed to discuss it all with Wolf as we followed Mrs Robson into the kitchen, where we sat down, staring at one another, speechless, round the table while she poured out the tea. And no one objected to, or seemed to notice, Thane lying peacefully at my feet.

I was free, safe, Thane and I could be on the next train to Edinburgh and home. But before we left, there were one or two questions I still needed answers for.

I looked at Collins, so tearful, with Kate holding her hand. I desperately wanted to get these two alone, to find out just how exactly Collins had been helping Hubert and who she had been getting rid of.

My chance came when I went upstairs to take a last look round the room, making sure I had left no belongings behind in my hasty packing. Wolf was waiting downstairs with the pony cart to take me into Alnwick.

Collins was leaving Kate’s room. She would have walked past me without acknowledgement but I held out my hand, saying, ‘I’m leaving now. I hope Hubert will soon be back with you.’ And in a rush, I added, ‘I never wanted to marry him; I never wanted to cut you out. Please believe me.’

She looked away, said awkwardly, ‘All right, I believe you.’

‘We were all very concerned by your disappearance.’ 

‘I came back last night, Kate let me in.’ So that was the whispering I heard. ‘I went to stay with my friend Elsie up at the Castle. And to have an interview for a situation there.’

‘As a governess?’

Her face clouded. ‘Alas, no, a sort of upstairs personal maid. But I felt it was rather beneath me. I had hoped for at least Her Grace. I was disappointed. And, of course, I didn’t want Hubert to know. After the way he’d treated me, I decided he deserved to suffer.’

I thought of how little she had succeeded and of his indifference as she went on, ‘But I didn’t want to distress Kate. I didn’t just disappear, you know. I left a note for her inside the book she was reading. Didn’t realise she’d started reading a new novel and wouldn’t find it right away.’

There was a silence. Then because curiosity got the better of me and I had to know, I said: ‘Incidentally I know about poisoned mushrooms – Wolf told me about them. How did Cedric come in contact with the Destroying Angel, the deadliest of the lot?’

She stared at me, her suddenly flushed countenance giving away her guilt. ‘You might as well know the truth, though no one will ever believe you, and if Hubert recovers I will deny every word. Hubert wanted rid of Cedric because he knew that he was in love with Kate. And he had other plans for her.’

‘What other plans?’

‘I’m not certain, he never spelt them out. Just that Cedric wasn’t good enough for her – thought he was just after her money.’

Which was probably true, I thought.

‘So we talked about things – and I thought the Destroying Angel would give him a bad fright.’

I knew that was a lie, but I let her go on. Her obsession with Hubert had taken her well out of reason’s grasp.

‘I think Cedric was a danger to Hubert, blackmailing him, from hints he dropped. And that was terrible, he deserved what he got, but I was sorry that Kate was so upset. First love, and all that sort of thing. But she’s young, she’ll get over it.’

Again I wondered if Collins had ever noticed the thin line between reason and madness that lurked in the Staines family due, no doubt, to so many generations of intermarriage.

‘Do you think he is going to die?’ she asked.

I said: ‘I hope not – for your sake,’ and as I left her, I had the feeling she had wanted to confess, to tell someone, even someone she had no reason to care for.

Downstairs Wolf was waiting with Thane. The story was almost told.

The Edinburgh train was late, delayed by signal failure at Newcastle.

Wolf waited with us and we took a seat on the almost deserted platform.

‘So this is goodbye, Rose.’

‘When do you leave?’ I asked.

‘Soon.’

‘Back to Arizona?’

‘Yes. Pick up the threads of the life I left long ago. There will be plenty to do on the Reservation – another kind of fighting – for justice for oppressed tribes. I will apply for a job with the Indian Bureau of Affairs.’

That was the way my Danny had chosen – the Indian Bureau and Pinkertons, doing the same kind of fighting Wolf had in mind.

My face must have betrayed my emotions. With that uncanny ability to read my thoughts, he took my hands.

‘Come with me, Rose. I know I’m old enough to be your father,’ he added apologetically.

I laughed at that. The contrast between Wolf and Pappa was ludicrous. Sad too, for this was the conventional ‘out’ for men who did not really want any emotional involvement.

‘I mean it. It is a good, worthwhile life. And we can be 
married, your way, the Christian way, if that is what you want.’

I was flattered by this totally unexpected proposal and I would have enjoyed spending the rest of my days with this man, whose strange and very remarkable qualities I had instinctively recognised on our first meeting in Solomon’s Tower.

But as for his version of a rewarding life, I wasn’t sure that really appealed. I had my own rewarding life. I had done the pioneering part for ten years with Danny and I knew
first-hand
the hardships of living on Indian reservations. Our baby son had died on one, in a tepee. I thought so often, so longingly, of that tiny unmarked grave in the desert, and knew I never wanted to see another tepee ever again.

A return to Arizona would be too painful; too many memories lurked in its cathedral-like red rocks.

‘We can have a proper house,’ said Wolf, a mind-reader again. ‘Say yes, Rose. There is no one I would rather be with.’

There was no one I would rather be with either, come to that; I would miss him when he had gone. I was flattered, yes, but not tempted. Hero-worship, at close quarters in everyday living, soon vanished.

I knew I could never resurrect the rapture of that first
all-consuming
love for Danny as, alas, I had discovered with Jack Macmerry. The breakdown in our relationship was all my fault. I could not forget the dream I had once lived.

Thane was looking into my face. ‘What of Thane?’ I asked. ‘I could never take him with me.’

Wolf smiled. ‘He would go back to the wild, to his life before he found you.’

But I couldn’t think of those years that might lie ahead without Thane. He was probably about eight years old, and this did not make him, by my calculations, immortal. 

Suddenly, I thought of the old Edinburgh ladies I met in Jenners’ tearoom. Some were my clients, well-to-do widows saying they could never have a holiday and clutching a fat old lapdog to a well-padded bosom:

‘Dear little Boysie can’t be left alone. He is too old now and he would die of neglect.’ And, with another hug and kiss, they would say, ‘No holiday would ever be worth that.’

I had thought it silly, but now I was one with them. I understood such feelings, and Thane was no fat, overfed, asthmatic old lapdog. He was my friend, my protector, and I owed him my life. However the world might regard such devotion, he was as precious to me as any human, and as long as he lived and needed me, I would remain in Edinburgh, on Arthur’s Seat, where we both belonged.

I wondered if he, too, was sharing my thoughts, as while we talked, I patted his head and, as if he felt the reassurance, he looked up at me and wagged his tail, knowing that he was safe too.

A bell rang signalling the train’s approach. We stood up. Wolf kissed me lightly and we held each other for a moment. Then he took Thane’s head between his hands, looked into his eyes, and whispered something in his own Indian language.

A moment later, it was over. We were on the train, gliding out of the station, and Wolf had vanished, hidden from us by the smoke. As if we had never been in his life or he in ours.

I looked at Thane, who settled down beside me, muzzle on paws in the empty compartment. He sighed deeply, a sigh for the loss of Wolf Rider, his soul mate. But I came first. Thane was mine and I was his dear human. 

Vince provided the ending of my disastrous visit to Staines. He had been hopeful that he was to hear that his stepsister was to marry Hubert, and was shocked to learn of Hubert’s accident, reported to him as being caused by the accidental collapse in the gun room of a large stuffed bear which fell on top of him. Left paralysed by this weird accident, it was a sad end to his photographic career, but at least he had a devoted companion nurse.

I thought it ironic that Collins had won a sour victory. Years later I learnt that, despite Hubert’s rejection, he was hers for the rest of his life. For worse, not better, faithful to the end, she followed him to the grave after an unspecified illness soon after his death.

Their guilt in certain ‘accidental deaths’ went with them unproven. In particular, Hubert’s, for his wife Mary. For Cedric’s death they were both responsible.

A short time after my return I read in
The Scotsman
, with considerable surprise, that Kate, now orphaned, was living with the Dowager Countess of Southwell until her forthcoming marriage to the young Earl of Southwell, who, according to Vince, was a penniless aristocrat to whom Kate’s fortune would be a welcome relief. But this was a love match. They had met, without him revealing his identity, during the Duke of Northumberland’s September 1897 shooting party.

I was intrigued. Could this be the same handsome young man, the Duke’s travelling companion, whom I had briefly glimpsed talking to Kate that day, when a shot rang out and Hubert alleged that someone had tried to kill him?

Perhaps the final irony was delivered by Mrs Robson. The faithful retainer, she remained with Sir and Martha Collins to the end. Afterwards, Staines became a boys’ boarding school 
and Mrs Robson retired, to live next door to her friend Grace Sloan.

More out of curiosity about subsequent events in Staines than anything else, I admit, we had kept in touch and she enjoyed the excuse to come to Edinburgh and have tea at Jenners’.

Despite many hints, I never found out from her any sinister reason for Hubert’s devotion to Kate or his intentions for her future, or if there was any truth in the village gossip, regarding ‘goings-on’ with under-age girls.

However, on one of Mrs Robson’s visits I learnt, as I had long suspected, that she knew more about Cedric’s birth than she had been prepared to admit while employed at Staines. Before she died, Cedric’s mother had revealed that his real father was Hubert Staines.

I spared Mrs Robson the true facts of Cedric’s death, but now I knew why, looking at that young man’s face in death, he had reminded me of someone.

Hubert Staines.

So desperate for an heir that he was prepared to go to any lengths to get one, including a forced marriage, by a bitter stroke of irony, Hubert had conspired in the death of his only son, Cedric Smith.

And as I write the final words of this the strangest of all my cases, I have resumed my life as Lady Investigator, Discretion Guaranteed, and Thane is still with me, back again running free on Arthur’s Seat.

Sometimes, during the night, when the wind carries the sound of trains from Waverley Station, I think of Wolf Rider and his parting with Thane, those words, once so familiar to me:

‘Till we meet again, the Great Spirit be with you.’