The Mermaid in the Basement (24 page)

Septimus Newton could not seem to find an answer. He had spent his whole life in the scientific world and had, more or less, ruled God out as a possibility.He had instilled this in his daughter, but now there were signs of doubt on his forehead. “I appreciate your sentiment, and I wish—”

Septimus never finished his sentence, for the door opened, and Serafina stepped in. She was wearing a simple dress of some light green material, and her hair was carefully pinned high on her head.”Good morning, Dylan.”

“Good morning, Viscountess.”

“What have you two been talking about?”

“Oh, just man talk,” Septimus said quickly. “I found out quite a lot about Mr. Tremayne.”

“You have to be careful of my father. He’s very nosy.” Serafina went over and put her arm around her father. It was the first show of affection that Dylan had ever seen in her—except with David—and he thought it made a beautiful scene.

“Now I’m going to take Mr. Tremayne away.” She gave Dylan a bright smile.

“I hope you can stay. David talks about you all the time,” Newton said.

“He’s a fine lad.”

Serafina turned to go, and Dylan said, “It was good talking with you, sir.”

Serafina led him to the library, and Dylan immediately gave an update. “Grant came to question the cast yesterday. He’s a tough young fellow. He put everybody on the spot. Everybody’s walking around in shock.”

“Does he suspect one of them?”

“Oh, he suspects everybody, I think. But tell me about what you found.”

She turned and said, “I’ve been trying to read the journal, and I’ve decided that we need to put everything back as it was—after I copy the journal, or the parts that I think are significant.”

“Why would we want to put it back?”

“Because if it’s evidence against the real murderer, the police need to find it. They’re not going to think much of it as evidence if we rush in and say, ‘Look, here are all the things you missed.’”

“Right, you! We’ll think of some way.What’s the next step?”

“I think we need to talk to Katherine Fairfield’s maid. She was the last one to see Kate alive, and she’s the one who found the body.”

“She doesn’t have to talk to us.We’re not the police.”

“I know, but we’ll find a way. There’s something else we should do,”

Serafina said. “We need to go to all the tobacconists in London and see who smokes the Roi Blanco cigars.”

“There must be a hundred of them.”

“You can rule out most of them. Only the exclusive shops handle this brand. If we find one tobacconist who sells them, he’d know who his competition would be.”

“Good idea. We could start early tomorrow. Perhaps this afternoon we could see Katherine’s maid.”

“Do you know her?”

“Oh yes. She won’t be hard to find.”

They were interrupted suddenly when David came rushing into the room. He saw Dylan and ran to him. “Are you come to go fishing with me?”

“Not today,” Dylan said with a sparkle in his eye. He glanced at Serafina and hesitated before saying, “But I’ll tell you what.Why don’t we go to the circus?”

David looked at him, his eyes wide. “A circus? I’ve never been to a circus.”

“Everybody ought to go to the circus. I’ll bet if you’d ask your mum, she’d go with us.”

“Can we go, Mum, to the circus?” David asked, his eyes bright with anticipation.

Serafina paused before answering, then decided an outing would be good for everyone. “I think we should.” She knew that David was hungry for companionship and said, “Let me go find Dora and see if she’ll go with us.We’ll make an afternoon of it.”

David said, “Hurray!” and began to dance around. “Let’s go quick, Mum!”

The circus was held at the Crystal Palace, and the star of the show was Blondin, the world-famous tightrope walker. Dora had been reluctant to come, but she joined in the fun slowly and seemed to put her fears for Clive behind her. She was watching now as Blondin walked along a tightrope high in the air as confidently as a man walked on a paved roadway. “How does he do it?” Dora breathed.

“He has wonderful balance,” Dylan said. “I read about him. You know he walked a tightrope stretched across Niagara Falls?”

“Really?” Serafina asked. “That must have been something to see.”

“He tried to get the Prince ofWales to go across with him in a wheelbarrow, but, of course, the prince had more sense than to go.”

“Did anybody go,Mr. Dylan?”David asked.“I would like to have gone.”

“It’d be a long way down at those falls. You think you’d have been afraid?”

“I might be, but Mum wouldn’t be. She’s
never
afraid.”

“Don’t say that, David.” Serafina smiled, and her lips made a delightful picture. “I’m afraid of a lot of things.”

When the show was over, they stopped for beef sandwiches, and Dora took David to see the animals in the menagerie.

“I worry about David.”

“He seems healthy and a bright young boy.”

“He gets very lonely.”

“You think he misses his father?”

Serafina almost flinched, and Dylan did not miss it. She did not answer the question, and he said, “Well, he wasn’t lonesome today anyway. You’re looking very well, Viscountess. The trip has put some colour in your cheeks.”

Serafina laughed shortly. “I suppose you’re used to young women chasing you around.My maid, Louisa, has fallen in love with you already— and Dora thinks you’re the most handsome man in the world. I suppose you’re accustomed to that sort of adulation?”

“All that’s for some actor. That’s not me.”

“You have a lot of women pursuing you. I’ve seen them after the performances. Do you have much trouble rejecting them—or
do
you reject them?”

“I don’t think it’s a healthy situation for a man to be pursued by women.”

“It must be hard to say no when an attractive woman comes to you.”

“It takes grace.”

“Grace?”

“Yes, you have to get grace from God. It takes grace,” he said, “as a man fills his cup under the waterfall.And I look on women as rather dangerous anyway—like tigers, beautiful but with deadly potential. I read once a story about a girl who was so beautiful she could fade the purple out of cloth and tarnish mirrors with her looks.”

“She must have been quite a woman.”

“Yes. The Talmud says that if a woman walks between two men and no appropriate prayer is said, one of them will die.”

“So you have to pray to God to protect you from women.”

“And from almost everything else,” he said. “Look, David’s coming back. I expect we’d best get you back home again.”

“It’s been a beautiful day. Thank you, Dylan. Tomorrow we’ll see the maid and search for the tobacconist.”

“Right, you.”They turned to face Dora and David, both of them talking excitedly about the animals that were on exhibit.

“Can we go fishing when we get home, Mr. Dylan?”

“No, I have to go to work. I have to make a living, you know.”

“Maybe we can pay you so you don’t have to go to work.”

Dylan laughed suddenly.“That would be great.”He turned to Serafina, humour dancing in his eyes.“How much do you feel a broken-down actor is worth?”

“You’re not broken down!” David protested.

“No, you’re not indeed,” Dora said. “It’s been such a wonderful afternoon! I’ve almost managed to put Clive out of my mind. He’s always there.”

Dylan said, “God is going to do a work for your brother.”

“Do you really believe that?” Dora whispered, her eyes pleading.

“Yes.”

David said, “I want to see the elephant again, Mr. Dylan.” He took Dylan’s hand, and the two started off. Dora and Serafina watched them until they fell behind enough, and Dora whispered, “He’s such a kind man—and so good with David! He’s just what David needs, a man to pay him some attention.”

Serafina could not answer for a moment, but finally she said, “Yes, and I hope he’s the man Clive needs too.”

“It’s amazing how he’s come into our lives at just the right time. It’s almost like a miracle, isn’t it?”

Serafina said, “He would agree with you, I’m sure.” She watched the tall form of Dylan Tremayne and the well-known and loved form of her son, David, and did not speak.

THIRTEEN

T
he family had gathered for breakfast, but Serafina was not hungry. Rising from her chair, she moved across the room toward the open window. She looked out on the lawn as the heavy scent of wildflowers wafted inside.

It was a fine April afternoon, and the windows faced a long lawn set with trees sloping down to the brook. The willows made a cavern of green and reflected like lace on the barely moving currents. Roses covered a nearby pagoda, its white lattice arches visible through the leaves. As she stood there, Serafina was unmoved by the beautiful day. Her eyes fell on the blossoms of the garden with their riotous colours, and the brilliant flair of tulips caught her eye. The lupines were beginning to bloom, tall columns of pinks and blues and purples, and a dozen oriental poppies had opened, fragile and gaudy as coloured silk in a bed right below the window. Something like mild shock ran along Serafina’s nerves as she realised that the beautiful day and the magnificent flowers brought her no joy. She could remember times when this sight had brought her a keen pleasure, but now it was nothing but an attractive scene.

From somewhere deep in her imagination, a thought came to Serafina—one of those unsought fragments of memory that formed part of her thinking process. She had read a book once about Iceland, and had seen drawings of the natives. She remembered vividly one of the pictures—a woman dressed in furs, her square brown face seamed with age and weathered like an old block of wood. She was sitting cross-legged in the snow, obviously enjoying her crude meal greatly.
That savage woman
living on the very edge of death probably was enjoying her life at that
moment more than I am now, even with all the conveniences that money
can buy.
Serafina was grieved at the thought, for it was the sort of imaginative process that she had tried for years, under her father’s tutelage, to root out of her mind.

The memory disturbed her greatly, and she closed her eyes for a moment, aware that the others in the room were talking about Clive’s plight.When she forced herself to open her eyes, she saw that David and Danny were beneath a large yew tree, digging a hole. Even from where she stood, she could see the dirt on David’s face as well as the bright smile he flashed at the groom, and she wondered what future lay before this son who, in one sense, was all she had in the world. The future was always a darkling place for her, one she thought of as little as possible. Although she was not a Bible believer, she had heard a verse of Scripture once that said, simply, “Give not thought for the morrow. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” It had somehow taken root in her mind, and she had accepted it as one of the rules of her life.

As she watched David throwing dirt in arcs over his head and Danny Spears laughing at him, a cold touch of apprehension came over her.
Parents can do only so much for their children. Sooner or later they’ll go
their own way and make their own choices—and parents must stand and
watch helplessly.

She heard Dora say, “Father, I’m so worried.What are we going to do about Clive?”

The note of panic in Dora’s voice pulled Serafina around, and she studied the face of her younger sister.
I was so much like her at her age.
She’s not a brilliant girl, but she has a sweetness that I once had —and lost
somewhere along the way.

“We’ll just have to do the best we can for him,” Septimus said. His voice, usually strong and vigorous, was weak and held a slight tremor.

Serafina looked at his face and noticed lines that were not there before.

He seemed to have aged very suddenly, and the thought frightened her. Her father had always been there for her. He had been her tutor, her teacher, her friend. She had never thought of him as being an old man, but now she saw the early signs of old age in his face, and the unsteadiness in his hands.
He’s always been so certain. He’s always been able to solve
problems in his work, but this is different. I wonder if life will ever be the
same for any of us in this house.

Serafina glanced around the room.None of them except Aunt Bertha had been able to eat. They had consumed much of the tea, but it was Bertha who fed a steady stream of bacon and fairy cakes into her mouth. She also dominated the conversation with her loud voice. Suddenly she turned to Serafina and said, “Well, you’re certainly not doing the family’s name any good.”

Serafina was accustomed to Aunt Bertha’s charges, and she asked simply, “What are you talking about, Aunt Bertha?”

“Talking about? What am I talking about?” Aunt Bertha popped another fairy cake into her mouth and chewed it vigorously. Eating did not appear to have any effect on Bertha’s speaking process. She could eat steadily and talk rapidly at the same time. “I’m talking about that actor you’ve been running around with all over town .You’re going to ruin the family name!”

Serafina did not bother to answer, but Dora’s face suddenly flushed pink. “Our family name isn’t in good standing now, Aunt Bertha. At least Mr. Tremayne is trying to do something for poor Clive.”