The Camelot Caper (19 page)

“They'll find it.” Freddie's head reappeared. “We're going to leave our bits of stone protruding here, remember? The ring will be found at the base of the wall, where it might have been dropped by a panicky thief climbing over.”

“Very nice,” said John appreciatively. “I can see the
Observer
pulling out all the stops on that one.”

For some minutes Jess had been seriously alarmed by the ominous quaking movements her companion was making. The last comment was too much. He burst into a shout of laughter.

Jess couldn't have run if she had wanted to; her muscles were too stiff from squatting in the damp. And she had come to share David's unworried assessment of the situation; it was too ludicrous to be frightening. She began to
suspect that they had both misjudged the problem when Freddie's hand dived into his pocket and came out with a small black object. The sight of it alarmed John as much as it did Jess.

“Here, now,” he exclaimed, snatching at it.

Freddie hopped nimbly to one side.

“Stop it, you bloody fool, or I'll shoot you as well. Come out from behind that wall, whoever you are.”

David straightened himself to his full height; he was grinning broadly, and both hands were in his pockets.

“It's all right, Jess, he's just playing villain. He wouldn't dare use that gun.”

He leaned negligently against the wall, which was about waist high. Jess had to admit that his casual pose and his grin were probably annoying. But the reaction was far more violent than she had cause to expect; she didn't believe what was happening even after she saw the spurt of flame from the muzzle of the gun and heard the report.

The sharp short sound was like the snap of a magician's fingers, that turned them all to stone. Jess saw the two men through a sudden fog that dimmed her eyes: Freddie with his dark face twisted in a snarl and his arm half extended;
John frozen in the middle of an abortive attempt to snatch at the weapon.

David too stood motionless, leaning slightly forward against the wall's support. Very slowly his head fell back. His elbows slid out across the top of the wall. Then he fell.

T
he affair had turned from farce to tragedy too quickly for Jess to accept its reality. She didn't need to look at David, sprawled face down in the weeds, to be convinced that he was dead; but the thought short-circuited her brain, and for the following minutes she operated on sheer, unreasoning instinct. She got over the wall with the neat movements of an experienced climber, and ran toward Freddie and his gun.

She probably would have ended her brief career then and there if it had not been for her cousin, who came out of his horrified paralysis in time to complete the movement he had begun. The bullet struck the ground, not too far from Freddie's foot, and Freddie made a brief, pungent remark. He added viciously, “Grab her, then, you fool. If she goes haring off into the night screaming, I swear I will plug her.”

Cousin John made a lunge for Jess and
caught her just before she could claw at Freddie's face. They wrestled. Jess's strength was intensified by extreme mental anguish and John was restrained by the code of his class from clobbering a lady, though she was in no state to appreciate his forbearance. Freddie, watching the struggle with cynical amusement, suggested, “Slug her. Or I shall.”

“If you must talk…like an American gangster film,” said Cousin John, between gasps, “please try to…ugh!…bring your slang…up to date. Jess, stop it. I don't want…ooooh, you nasty young woman!”

The comment ended in a howl of pain as Jess sank her teeth into his hand. Carried away, he swung a useful fist, and Jess saw stars. Draped limply over her cousin's arm, she heard him say, “Take a look at him, Fred. If you've killed the fellow…”

“I haven't,” said Freddie. He sounded regretful. “He's breathing.”

“Thank God. Is he badly hurt?”

“Can't tell,” said Freddie, with supreme indifference.

“Well, find out! If he needs a doctor…”

“He's not going to get a doctor.”

Jess was in a peculiar state, not so much from
the effect of her cousin's sock on the jaw, which had not been very hard, but from shock. Her numbed brain had accepted the fact of David's breathing with the same lack of reaction with which it had accepted his supposed demise; she could feel her heart banging frantically around inside her rib cage, and knew that she was incapable of resistance or flight. In her confusion she missed part of the discussion, and only stirred feebly when she felt herself being lifted.

“It's a good job she's small,” her cousin remarked. “Even so, I'm not sure I can carry her the whole distance.”

“You'll have to. I can't leave him, he might wake up. Bring a mattress, or stretcher, or something to carry him on.”

Jess had been carried before, but only by male acquaintances anxious to show off their muscles. The position was surprisingly uncomfortable when head and limbs were left dangling. She made croaking noises, and tried to lift her head.

“She's coming round,” said Cousin John, alarmed.

“Then put her out again, you incompetent ass,” said Freddie. “Oh, Christ, you're hopeless. Here…”

Incompetence was not one of Freddie's vices. What he did, he did well. She felt a brief, sharp flash of pain, and then nothing.

 

Waking up was far more painful. Noises beat at her head; rough hands jabbed her face and neck. There was light somewhere, nasty dirty gray light like the pale luminosity of fungi grown in a damp cellar….

The first thing she saw was David's face, enormous, and out of focus, hovering inches from her eyes. The upper part of his face was disfigured by dried blood; the lower part by a dark growth of beard. His eyes were bloodshot and his lips were cracked. A more beautiful sight she had never seen.

Jess sat up, ignoring the twinge of pain that shot through her head. She had been lying on a pile of dusty rags laid on a bare wooden floor. The light was not as intense as she had thought; it filtered through glass panes so black with dust that they looked translucent, and the bars set across them further obscured the light. The windows were small and high, set in cold stone walls whose austerity was softened only by enormous swinging swaths of gray spiderwebs. The walls were curved. That fact, she knew, ought to mean something, but at the moment
she could not think what. She could comprehend only basic ideas—stone walls, bars—a prison, and nuts to Lovelace's definition. And David—still alive, and conscious, but not being very convincing about either one.

“They shot you,” she exclaimed, clutching at him. “Where did they shoot you?”

“Shoulder, of course. Where else do heroes get shot?” He grinned at her. The effect was indescribably horrible.

“Leg,” Jess said.

“My legs weren't exposed. When you stop to think about it, shoulders are logical places in which to be shot. They take up quite a lot of area. With a hand weapon, at any distance, it's not easy to hit—”

“Oh, David, you fool, can't you ever stop talking?”

Her embrace was, under the circumstances, too fervent. Still smiling, David folded up and fell over backward. She snatched at him, trying to keep his head from banging on the floor; and found herself down, hands pinned between black hair and dusty wood, body hard against what had to be his injured shoulder.

She looked down into his face, which was sickeningly white under its varied scars, and took a grip on herself.

“So long as I've got you helpless,” she said, and kissed him thoroughly. Then she untangled herself, sat up, and inspected their quarters.

She had already absorbed most of the information in that first glance; there was very little in the room. A cot, made up with rough blankets, which had, from its relative cleanliness, been recently moved into the abandoned chamber; a small inlaid table, whose polished elegance was distinctly out of place—these were the only articles of furniture. There was a single wooden door, which Jess didn't even bother to try. On the table stood a thermos, a pitcher of water, and two glasses, long-stemmed, fragile crystal wine glasses. Jess recognized the touch. It was apparent as well in the only other article the room contained, besides cobwebs: a round white vessel, placed discreetly behind the cot and painted, chastely, with blue forget-me-nots.

“I'm going to put you on that cot,” said Jess. First things first, she thought.

“I've been on it.” David tried to help; it took their combined efforts to land him on the cot, with a jolt that left him limp.

“What happened? Do you remember anything?” Jess searched her pockets. She had no handkerchief. She took off her sweater and her blouse, replaced the sweater—the room was
dank and chilly—and tore a piece out of the blouse. She soaked it in the water and mopped David's brow.

“Not a thing, between the time that crook shot me and the moment when I woke up in this chamber of horrors with you flat on the floor beside me. I thought the worst; that's why you caught me babbling and pawing at you. I'm not my usual phlegmatic self.”

“You certainly aren't yourself. Didn't they even try to bandage you? Damn them. What a pair of cold-blooded—”

“They probably had other things on their minds,” David said reasonably. “No, Jess, leave it alone. At least it's stopped bleeding, and if you start mucking around with it…Do you know where we are?”

“Only one place we can be. The house.”

“Right. One of the tower rooms, obviously. I know you feel pretty rotten yourself, but do you think you can reach that window?”

She could, by standing on tiptoe, but she could see very little. The bars were several inches from the glass and too closely set to permit the insertion of anything larger than a finger, so she couldn't wipe any of the encrusted grime from the glass.

“I can see the courtyard,” she reported,
squinting. “It's one of the back towers. David, it's dawn. We've been here all night.”

“No way out through the windows?”

Jess tried to shake the bars. They didn't stir.

“Well, try the door, just for laughs.”

The door was definitely locked. Jess couldn't hear a sound outside, even when she put her ear against the panels. The floor, though old, was equally impervious to attack, and the stone walls she didn't even try.

She went back to the cot, wrung out her shirt-tail, and wiped David's face again. He made no sound, but the relaxation of his tight mouth as the cool water touched his face made Jess sick with rage and pity.

“We may as well face the facts,” he muttered. “We're caught good and proper, darling. Even if you could break the glass in those windows, we're at the back of the house, where visitors never come; no use yelling for help. And I'm in no condition to overpower the villains when they enter. I rather doubt if I can stand up.”

“But they can't just leave us here! You need a doctor….”

“I don't think they will just—leave us here.”

She stared at him wide-eyed, her hand at her mouth.

“I'm sorry, I don't mean to frighten you,” he said gently. “But the prospect's rather grim. They've gone further than they intended already; in for a penny, in for a pound, you know. And your suave cousin is not the man to—”

The hideous room needed only the rattling of chains to complete its Gothic air; now the rattling was supplied. Jess bounded to her feet and glared, first at the door, whence the rattling came, then around the room for a possible weapon. Her wild eyes lit on the convenience standing demurely in the corner, and in one leap she had gathered it up into her hands. A second leap carried her to the door, chamber pot raised for action.

The door grated and groaned in traditional fashion as it swung slowly open. Jess saw David, raised painfully on one elbow, regarding her with alarm; she waved the chamber pot at him and he subsided, whether in response to her warning or in shocked unconsciousness she could not be sure. Then the opening door cut off her view of the bed.

It opened about halfway and stopped. There was a pause, during which she heard only the sound of even breathing. Then in a sudden rush
the door finished its swing and pinned her flat as a beetle against the wall. A hand curved around the edge of the door, caught her wrist, and shook; the pot fell, sending sprays of forget-me-nots into the air.

Released, Jess slumped against the wall, fighting tears of rage and frustration. She didn't move, even when the door closed, exposing her to the quizzical gaze of her cousin.

“Freddie's down below, in case you're thinking of bolting,” he remarked, and bent to pick up a heavy tray which he had put carefully off to one side before frustrating her attempt to brain him. He looked around for a spot on which to deposit his tray, found the ormolu table inadequate, and, with a shrug, put the tray back on the floor and sat down, crosslegged, beside it. Characteristically, he retained his aplomb even in this unorthodox position; but Jess thought his gaze tended to shy away from hers.

“Thought you might like a spot of tea,” he explained ingenuously.

“That's not all I'd like,” Jess said curtly, advancing on him. “No, don't give him that cup, he can't hold it. He can't even sit up. Hold his head and I'll take the cup.”

“Hmmm.” Cousin John contemplated David,
whose head was on the same level as his. He lifted a bottle from the tray and poured a stiff dose into the tea. “This may help.”

Between them they got the spiked tea into David without spilling more than half onto his chest, and Jess was relieved to see a tinge of color seep into his cheeks. He sank back without speaking, and though Jess knew he might be pretending greater weakness than he felt, he didn't have to pretend very hard. She fixed her cousin with a contemptuous stare, and was glad to see that his eyes fell before hers.

“Band-Aids and iodine?” she inquired, indicating the tray. “That's a lot of help. He needs a doctor, you—you murderer.”

“Well, he can't have one. Not immediately. Jess, not to worry—”

“Not to worry!” She leaped to her feet, fists clenched. “To think that I'm related to you! I'd rather have the Boston strangler for a cousin! I'd rather share grandparents with a sex maniac! The Marquis de Sade would be—”

“Now, he wouldn't be, not really. For goodness' sake, girl, calm yourself. At least we can make him more comfortable now; I'll help you, I know a bit about first aid. Then, tomorrow—”

“The execution?”

Cousin John looked shocked.

“Would I be going to all this trouble if we were planning to be so drastic? Why wouldn't we have killed you at once if that had been the idea?”

“I can think of several good reasons, John…” She called him by name, almost for the first time since she had met him. The result surprised both of them; it was incredible how much intimacy could be conveyed in a formal, personal name.

“You are my cousin,” Jess went on, after that brief, demoralizing pause. “And basically not such a bad human being. I think…”

“Thanks so much.”

“I'm sorry if I'm expressing myself badly. I don't even know for sure what you want out of all this. I don't care, so long as it's not something filthy like drugs or kidnaping. I just want—to keep on being alive. With David.”

“You are in love with the fellow, aren't you?”

Jess looked down at her recumbent lover. He was pathetic enough to disarm many a villain, with his dark lashes—she had already had occasion to note their unexpected length—lying on his pale cheek, his mouth curved down in a line of pain. The black hair on his forehead, under the filthy bandage, was tumbled, and even the arrogant nose looked smaller.
“Yes, I am.”

“And he's keen on you, too; that was obvious. Jess…”

He was kneeling beside the bed, so that she had to look down at him. The light outside had been steadily growing stronger. Enough of it filtered through the grimy panes to enable her to see him clearly, and his expression weakened her anger. She found it hard to believe that this man, whose well-cut features and keen blue eyes reminded her so strongly of her father, could be a murderer. The reasoning was faulty, but hard to fight.