Devil May Care (22 page)

have been a frightening sight; I doubt that I would have been cool enough to spot something like that under those circumstances." "Thanks," Ellie said wryly. "But why? What effect could--"

"I've got an idea," Donald interrupted. "Full skirts have one conspicuous virtue. They conceal. Either something about the person who is wearing them-- or something behind the skirts." "Good," Kate said crisply. "Your description of the second person--the presumed young man--is very vague, Ellie. How much did you actually see?"

"Not much," Ellie admitted. "Only the upper part of his bod}'; his legs were completely concealed by--"

It struck her then; the others had already caught on, to judge by their expressions. "A dummy?" she demanded, her voice rising with excitement. "A kind of half-scarecrow on a pole, carried along by--"

"That would explain the point that's been worrying me," Donald exclaimed. "I have never liked the idea of a group conspiracy. If we eliminate that sec and figure, everything could have been done by one person."

"Precisely." Kate dropped a chunk of pate into Simbel's open mouth. He spat it out at his feet; George ate it. Kate gave Simbel another piece.

"I don't believe in a group conspiracy either. Although ... "

The others waited expectantly. After a moment Kate gave herself a little shake.

"Never mind. The inaccuracy about the costume proves something else. Ghosts don't make mistakes like that. A human agency is implied."

She sounded genuinely regretful.

"What else?" the doctor asked eagerly. He was watching Kate like a disciple awaiting the words of the guru. Kate shrugged modestly.

"The library episode is obviously nonsupernatural.

Somebody wanted something in the house. I

ISO Elizabeth Peters can't believe in the coincidence of a professional burglar; the intruder must have been connected with the other events. There's just one more thing--" She turned suddenly to Donald, who sat up straight, removing his elbows from the table. His smile had vanished.

"I think Donald knows what I only suspect," Kate continued calmly. "Out with it, Donald."

"You're an awful woman," Donald growled. "All right, if you're so smart; what is it you suspect? No fair waiting till I tell you and then claiming you knew it all along."

"But if I tell first, you'll claim you knew," Kate protested.

They eyed one another warily.

"Okay," Donald said. "How about this? It has to do with the parchment--"

"With a certain word on the parchment?" Kate's eyes twinkled.

"And the implications of that word--"

"Which suggest a possible motive--"

"For a burglar. And the word--"

"Is in the past tense."

The other two had followed this insane dialogue in stupefied silence. As soon as it was concluded, the speakers burst into whoops of laughter, exchanged cries of mutual congratulation, and went through a complex ritual of handshaking, which ended with each of them slapping the other's hand as hard as possible. Ellie looked at Dr. Gold. He shook his head.

"If we didn't love them--" he said.

"I'll explain," Donald said. Kate, who had gotten a little carried away by the ritual, was rubbing her stinging palm. "Here's the parchment. I looked the word up in the library earlier this evening."

"You'd better let me explain," Kate broke in. She produced a pair of glasses from amid the voluminous folds of the caftan, perched them crookedly on the end of her nose, and squinted through them.

" ' noster qui erat in caelis ...' The Lord's DEVIL-MAY-CARE 181

Prayer, as you correctly identified it. But listen to the precise translation. ' Father who was in heaven.' A trifle unorthodox, surely." She removed the glasses; her expression had lost all traces of humor.

"It is, however, a quite orthodox version of another kind of prayer. Lucifer, the fallen angel, who was once in heaven with the other angels, was the god of the witches. Perversions of Christian prayers were popular with devotees of what Margaret Murray has called the Old Religion. The worship of Satan.

This is a Satanist prayer; and the person who concealed it in the cover of that book was a devil worshiper. Possibly the leader of a local coven."

Ill Kate was quite in earnest, but she had been unable to resist making the announcement in her most dramatic voice; and the statement itself was sufficiently startling. The doctor refused to believe it. His cool skepticism did not prevent Kate and Donald from rushing headlong down jungly paths of conjecture.

"Motive," Kate exclaimed, with a wide, sweeping gesture. "If the names on the parchment are those of local worthies who were practicing witchcraft under their veneer of respectability ... sacrificing babies ... sexual orgies ... "

"Wait, wait," Ellie pleaded. "Kate, you don't know--"

"Blood!" Donald shouted. They all jumped. "The names are written in blood. When Dad mentioned those papyri with the red rubrics, that gave me the idea, and then I checked the Latin to see if there was any peculiarity in the text. They always signed contracts with the devil in their own blood--"

182 Elizabeth Peters

"Donald," Eliie said plaintively. "Won't you please stop doing that?"

"Thank God for someone with a little common sense," the doctor growled. He and Eliie exchanged glances of mutual approval and commiseration. Then he continued, "Listen here, you two. You don't know that those names are written in--in--good God, I can't bring myself to say it. Ridiculous! You don't even know that they are names. And if they are names, you don't know whose names!" "Oh, we'll check it out," Donald said airily. "I'm for Charlottesville first thing in the morning. Want to ride along, Eliie?" "I think I'd better," Eliie said.

"Of course we'll check it," Kate said indignantly.

"Really, Frank, you act as if I had no sense at all."

Her expression softened as she looked at the doctor.

"You're exhausted. Go home and get some sleep.

There's nothing more to be done tonight."

"I'm going to get some sleep, but not at home," Dr. Gold retorted. "You girls can't stay here alone."

Eliie heartily concurred with this sentiment, but Kate was furious at the suggestion that she couldn't handle any emergency single-handed. Eliie suspected she was hoping for something to happen; a burglar or a ghost, she would welcome either with pleasure. Finally she was reluctantly persuaded to accept Donald's company, provided Dr. Gold went home and got a good night's sleep. They all went to the door with him.

"It's stopped raining," Eliie said. "Look--there's a star." "Storm didn't do much good," the doctor said.

"Hot as ever. Well--you promise you'll call if anything --"

"Nothing will happen," Kate said firmly. "If it does, I have my gun. My Mauser."

The Golds exchanged glances.

DEVIL-MAY-CARE 183

"I'll get it away from her," Donald assured his father.

"Good night, Dad; don't worry."

After the doctor had gone, Ellie was conscious of a distinct change in the atmosphere. She didn't know what had caused it, but she rather thought Kate was looking shifty again.

"I'm bushed," Kate announced, stretching elaborately.

"I'm going to bed. Would you two young, strong, healthy people mind--" "Of course," Ellie said. "We'll lock up and everything."

"Don't forget to count cats."

"Naturally."

"Thank you, honey." Kate patted her cheek. "I'll see you both in the morning."

She moved languidly toward the stairs. Donald turned to Ellie.

"How about making some coffee? I've got to get that gun away from Kate."

"Good idea."

It had been a reasonable suggestion. Ellie was halfway to the kitchen when the unworthy suspicion struck her mind. She did not hesitate but tiptoed quickly back into the hall.

Kate and Donald were trying to keep their voices down, but they were standing in the upper hall, not far from the top of the stairs, and Ellie caught just enough to assure her that her suspicions had been justified. She took off her shoes and started up the stairs. The first sentence she heard clearly was spoken by Kate, and it was, in its way, quite characteristic.

"None of your business!"

"What do you mean, it's none of my business? You used my picture, didn't you? I want to know how, and I want to know why."

"How did you know--I mean, what makes you think it was your--"

"I recognized Ellie's description of the costume," 184 Elizabeth Peters Donald snapped. "I wore it in that silly damn costume drama the summer theater did two years ago.

You were studying photography that year and you were all over the place snapping pictures. Come on, Kate, quit stalling. Where did you hide the projector?

There must be a secret panel in this wall--"

From the muffled thuds that followed, Ellie realized he was pounding on the wall.

"Don't do that; Ellie will hear you," Kate hissed.

"I'll tell Ellie the whole thing if you don't come clean." "Ellie knows!" said that young woman, making a dramatic appearance. The two whirled around, looking as guilty as a pair caught in adultery, Ellie leaned against the wall, folded her arms, and spoke out of the corner of her mouth.

"The jig is up, Kate. Confess."

Kate was seldom at a loss for long. She studied her niece speculatively.

"How much did you hear?"

"I know you planted the first ghost. I think I even know why ... " To her fury--for she had thought herself completely in control of her emotions, and the situation--she felt herself blushing. She realized that Donald had turned red, too. Reading her mind again ... Really, he was less sophisticated than she had believed.

Kate was regarding both of them with a fond, maternal smile. Her expression snapped the last threads of Ellie's self-control.

"Don't think it worked, either," she snapped. "Really, Kate, you are the most outrageous combination of arrogance and naivete. Just because you don't like Henry, that doesn't give you any right to meddle in my private life. And why you should think that a silly adolescent trick like that would make me susceptible ... would make me fall in ... I mean ... "

"We had better drop that," Donald said hastily.

"Except that I want to go on record as agreeing with DEVIL-MAY-CARE 185

Ellie one hundred percent. How did you work it, Kate?"

Kate's face was as smug as that of one of the cats.

"There's a hiding place in the paneling," she said gaily, and demonstrated. A section of wood slid aside; in the cavity was a neat miniature projector.

"You don't notice the hole," Kate went on. "It looks like a part of the thermostat. The wires go down inside the wall. I rigged it myself."

"With a trip switch under the stair carpeting?" Donald asked.

"Yes. I had a terrible time with that part of it," Kate said, frowning. "I kept blowing fuses."

"But I looked," Ellie said. "Ted and I looked the next day ... " Her voice trailed off. Kate nodded.

"I had to let Ted in on it. I figured you would be too distracted to look for wires that night. He came in next day--he has his own key--and disconnected the visible part of the apparatus."

"But how did you have the time?" Ellie asked. She was conscious of a horrified fascination--an emotion Kate often induced in her friends. "You didn't know Henry till that day--at least I assume you--"

"Oh, I had taken a violent dislike to Henry before I ever met him," Kate explained easily. "The things you said about him in your letters ... I had the apparatus set up a long time ago, however. I've used it on several people." A wicked, reminiscent smile curved her soft lips. "At first I thought I'd set up some nice little vision for Henry, but when I met him I realized that he was far too stupid and pigheaded to be affected by something like that. He would simply have wiped the experience out of his mind. Then I got my inspiration." She smiled widely at Ellie.

They were getting back to the part of the problem they had all agreed to avoid. Donald, still slightly flushed, said firmly, 186 Elizabeth Peters

"Never mind that, Kate. Did you arrange anything else?"

"No, of course not." Kate looked startled. "You don't think I would--honest, Ellie ... Donald. You believe me, don't you?"

Oddly enough, both of them did.

"Then someone else must have used your initial offering as the springboard for his own tricks," Donald said.

"Obviously. But who? And why? I know what you're thinking; and it's true that Ted was the onlyone I told. But you've proved that Ted can't be the villain. I only wish I could be sure ... "

Her seif-reproach was obvious, and obviously sincere.

And her infuriating charm was so overpowering that the others had forgotten their outrage; they both joined in reassuring her.

"You can't blarne yourself for what happened to Ted, Kate," Donald said, patting her shoulder. "Get some sleep and forget about it for tonight. We'll tackle the problem again in the morning."

If Kate had had an ulterior motive in arousing their sympathy, it did not work. Donald had not forgotten the gun. Snarling, Kate finally produced it from under her pillow. The color left Donald's cheeks as he examined the weapon.

"The safety," he said, choking. "You sleep with it under .,.. and the safety isn't ... "

"Of course I don't sleep with it under my pillow," Kate said. "Really, Donald. I put it on the bedside table."

Donald and Ellie hovered in the hall until Kate's light went out and they heard the sounds of peaceful breathing.

"I feel like a nurse in charge of a disturbed child," Donald whispered.

Ellie was inclined to agree.

She thought she would not close her eyes all night, but she was very tired; she fell asleep the minute her DEVIL-MAY-CARE 187

head hit the pillow. Subconsciously, however, she must have been expecting a disturbance. After all, since her arrival she had only twice had a full night's sleep in the house; a pattern had been established.

She sat up, fully awake, when the noise began.

At least the lights were still working. She switched on her bedside lamp and ran to the window. The sounds were coming from outside. Roused rudely from sleep, Franklin sat up and began to bark shrilly.