Wheel of Fate (19 page)

The stonemasons were still at work on the wall and barely accorded me a glance as I passed through the gate. Even the gatekeeper nodded me through as if I were an old acquaintance, continuing his argument with the owner of a cartful of cabbages over the correct tariff necessary to bring it into the city.

‘I dunno,' the countryman was grumbling, ‘the bloody taxes keep going up every soddin' week as if they 'ad a soddin' life of their own. When's it goin' to end, that's what I want t' know.'

‘Don't we all?' snapped the gatekeeper. ‘But for now, just pay up and stop whinging. There's a queue forming behind you.'

I left them to it. There must be arguments like this going on at every gate in every city in the land. Having deliberately emptied my head of all thoughts regarding my own and Duke Richard's concerns, I began to feel extremely sleepy – Old Diggory's plodding gait rocked me gently from side to side – and there is little doubt that, for the second time that day, I would have fallen from the saddle had I not been jerked awake by a voice asking, ‘Chapman, is something wrong?'

I pulled myself upright, blinking stupidly against the gentle afternoon sunlight, and looked down into the concerned, bright-eyed gaze of Father Berowne.

‘Yes, yes! I'm quite well, I thank you. A little tired, perhaps.'

‘You've been doing too much too soon,' he said accusingly. ‘You've not long risen from your sickbed, and I saw you ride off with Master Godslove at a very early hour this morning. Come inside and have a cup of my elderflower wine. That . . . That is . . .' He broke off, looking flustered, suddenly recollecting that I had fallen ill shortly after drinking it the last time.

I grinned. ‘I won't, I thank you, Father, but not for the reason you're thinking. I exonerate your elderflower wine entirely. But I've been drinking already this afternoon' – I didn't say where or whose wine – ‘and I'm sleepy enough as it is. Besides, I can see you're busy.'

I indicated his earth-stained cassock and his mud-encrusted hands, one of which he was using to push back his unruly fringe of curls.

He laughed guiltily. ‘Gardening is one of my great pleasures in life, I'm afraid. I do it when I should be on my knees, praying. But somehow, I find it easier to talk to God in the open air, rather than in a stuffy church. Oh dear, oh dear! Is that very wrong of me? Not,' he added, ‘that I've much of a garden here. Just this little plot. But I do what I can.'

‘And you do it very well, Father,' I assured him, ‘very well indeed. And now I must get on. You're right. I have done more than I should today. I shall be glad of a rest.'

I jerked Old Diggory's reins and we plodded on up the track, pursued by the priest's good wishes, until, round the second bend, we came in sight of the Arbour. I expected to find it dozing in the warmth of mid-afternoon. Instead, there seemed to be a flurry of activity, with people milling around the gate and looking anxiously up and down the road. Adela was one of them, but as soon as she sighted me, she came flying towards me, just as she had done the day of my arrival. But this time, it was not good news.

‘Oh, Roger!' she gasped. ‘Thank God, thank God you're back at last! Celia's disappeared! We can find no trace of her anywhere!'

ELEVEN

I
dismounted and, grasping her by the shoulders, gave her a little shake.

‘Slowly, my love, slowly! Just tell me quietly what has happened.'

Before Adela could speak again, however, she was joined by Clemency and Sybilla, both out of breath from running and both talking at once.

‘. . . hasn't been seen since breakfast . . .'

‘. . . garden with the children . . .'

‘. . . hide-and-seek . . .'

‘. . . completely vanished . . .'

‘Oh, Roger, do something,' begged my wife.

The three children and Hercules had now arrived, the former looking sulky and more than a little defiant as children often do when they think they are being blamed for something that is not their fault, while the dog, catching the general mood of panic, began to bark, short, distressing yelps that pierced the ears and made them sing. Old Diggory snorted and tossed his head.

I dealt with first things first.

‘Quiet!' I yelled at Hercules, my stentorian tones for once cowing him into immediate submission. I then soothed the horse before waving a hand at Clemency and Sybilla, commanding their silence, and turned once more to my wife.

‘You say Celia is missing?' She nodded, ready to burst forth again, but I said firmly, ‘Wait! Wait until we are indoors and I can listen to you all properly. The horse must be stabled, too. He needs feeding and watering. Is there anyone who can see to this?'

‘I can,' said a firm voice, and I realized that, in the last few seconds, the housekeeper had also joined us. In her usual competent fashion, she took the reins from me, adding, ‘Go in, all of you. I've put ale and wine and some of those little cinnamon doucettes Sybilla likes so much on the table in the hall. Calm yourselves, then you can acquaint Master Chapman with such as there is to tell.' Arbella shrugged. ‘For my own part, I think the three of you are making a to-do about nothing. Celia has probably just gone for a walk.'

But when all the facts had been presented to me, I wasn't so sure that I agreed with her. It seemed that after the five women – the three sisters, Adela and the housekeeper – had breakfasted, together with the children, Celia had announced her intention of playing hide-and-seek in the garden with Nicholas, Elizabeth and Adam.

‘I have the headache and shall be all the better for a little air,' she had argued, brushing aside her sisters' concern and their advice to lie down upon her bed. ‘For sweet heaven's sake, I'm not ill,' she had reproved them. ‘A slight pain behind the eyes, that's all. Besides, I feel sure that Nick and Bess can't have discovered every nook and cranny of that garden and it's such a long time since I walked all round it. I used to love it when I was young. I was ten,' she had told Adela, ‘when we first came here, and I thought it paradise.'

And so she had gone out of doors with the children, all three of whom liked her much better than her half-siblings, and, as far as Adela could tell, seemed perfectly content to accept her company. But not long after the four of them, with Hercules yapping at their heels, had disappeared into the wilderness which was the Arbour garden, the reason for Celia's sudden desire for fresh air appeared in the shape of Roderick Jeavons. He had, ostensibly, come to see Sybilla and how she was progressing, but it was immediately apparent to the other women that the real purpose of his visit was to speak to Celia. He had plainly been angry at what he saw as her contrived absence and had declared his intention of following her and forcing his presence on her. In this, he had apparently been dissuaded by Adela who, with her quiet common sense, had persuaded him that such confrontations invariably ended in quarrels.

‘But it seems,' my wife said with a sigh, ‘that he changed his mind. The children say he did eventually seek them out somewhere in the garden and began urging his attentions on Celia.'

‘He put his arms round her and kissed her,' Elizabeth disclosed with a little shudder of excitement, obviously unsure whether she found such rough treatment masterful or repellent. (On the whole, I fancy she rather inclined to the former.)

‘And Celia slapped his face and called him a lot of names,' Nicholas added, round-eyed. ‘And Physician Jeavons called her a lot of names back and said she was an . . . an in . . . in . . . in-something whore.' I guessed the missing word to be incestuous, but refrained from saying so. ‘I didn't understand what he meant.'

‘Yes, well never mind that,' I said hastily. ‘What did the doctor do then?'

‘He went away,' Elizabeth said. She looked disappointed. ‘And we didn't see him any more.'

‘He did say he'd get even with her,' my stepson pointed out. ‘And I don't think he would have gone away then if Hercules hadn't started barking at him and trying to bite his ankles. It made Celia laugh and that made the doctor even crosser.'

The housekeeper had entered the hall in time to overhear Nicholas's last remark and she smiled sourly. ‘Oh, Celia enjoys humiliating the poor man,' she said, starting to pour the wine which we had so far neglected. She pushed full beakers towards us. ‘You'd think,' she went on angrily, ‘that a woman of her age would be grateful for a handsome man like that to come courting her. Plump in the pocket, too. Celia will soon be thirty-six. High time she was in an establishment of her own.'

‘Be quiet!' Clemency ordered her furiously. ‘I don't want to hear any more of such talk. Celia's happy here with us, and that's how we want it to remain. You'd better not say those things in front of Oswald. It would be as much as your place is worth.'

Arbella Rokeswood flushed painfully and her mouth shut like a trap. If looks could have killed, Clemency would have been a dead woman. And so would Sybilla, who was nodding vehemently in agreement.

‘I'm not sure I shan't tell him,' the latter told the housekeeper spitefully.

I slapped my open hand on the table making them all jump and spilling some of the wine.

‘These squabbles will get us nowhere,' I reproached them. I turned again to Nicholas and Elizabeth. ‘After Dr Jeavons left, what happened next?'

‘We went on playing hide-and-seek,' my daughter said. ‘It was Celia's turn to seek, so Adam and Nick and I ran off to hide. Nick and I went together because we'd found a little stone hut at the end of a long, twisty path – I don't know where Adam and Hercules went – and we waited and waited, but Celia never came. In the end, we thought she'd just got tired of playing and gone back indoors, so we came out and started a game of our own. Then, after a bit, we found Adam and Hercules. Adam had taken his shoes and hose off and was paddling in a stream at the end of the garden. Hercules was splashing about as well. They were both in a terrible state,' Elizabeth added virtuously, wrinkling her nose.

I gave Adam an admonitory glance, which he returned with a wide-eyed, innocent stare.

‘And then?' I prompted.

‘And then it was dinnertime,' Adela said. ‘I went out to call the children in, but there was no sign of Celia. And when I asked where she was, Nick and Bess said she'd gone back to the house, but she hadn't. Clemency, Sybilla and I searched everywhere, but there was no sign of her. Sybilla and Clemency then went outside to search the garden – I had to clean up Adam and Hercules – but again, they could find no trace of her.'

‘I tell you, you're making a fuss about nothing,' Arbella put in irritably. ‘Celia's gone for a walk to clear her headache. She'll be home presently, you mark my words.'

‘She didn't come home for dinner.' Sybilla began to cry. ‘It's hours now since anyone's seen her. She wouldn't stay out walking all this time. Something's happened.' Her voice rose shrilly. ‘Someone's killed her. Whoever it is who's trying to harm us. I think we ought to send for Oswald. He'll know what's to be done.'

Clemency put an arm around her sister's shoulders. ‘Hush, my dear. Let's not jump to conclusions. As Arbella says, there may be a perfectly satisfactory explanation.' But her voice quavered and I could hear the panic behind the sensible advice.

‘I'm presuming Dr Jeavons got into the garden without returning to the house,' I said. ‘Am I right? Is there a separate entrance to the garden?'

Clemency nodded. ‘There's a side gate that leads through from the little copse.'

‘The copse?'

‘A thick stand of trees that grows some way back from the main track,' Adela explained. ‘It's not a part of the Arbour land. It just happens to be on the other side of the gate.'

‘And has the copse been searched?'

Clemency and Sybilla looked guiltily at one another. ‘We . . . we didn't think . . .'

‘Stay here,' I commanded. ‘I'll go and look. Just tell me how to find this gate.'

‘We'll show you,' my daughter volunteered, catching hold of Nicholas's hand.

‘You'd better let them, Roger,' my wife advised. ‘You've only seen the garden from the windows. It's more of a labyrinth than you imagine.'

She was not exaggerating. Nothing had apparently been done to it in the quarter of a century that the Godsloves had lived there. It had simply been allowed to return to its natural state. Here and there could still be discerned the remnants of a formal layout: a rose garden, a shrubbery, a sunken herb garden, the stone hut at the end of an overgrown path which had probably once served as repository for picks and spades. But now the roses ran riot, the once exotic blooms reverting to the single, pallid dog-rose of the hedgerow, the shrubbery a mass of stunted, scrubby plants that impeded progress and tore at one's hose, but which provided wonderful cover for secret games and hide-and-seek. There was a stream, too, at the far edge of the property, forming its western boundary, the clear water rippling over pebbles and shale with little black minnows swimming in its depths. A child's paradise indeed, and yet, to my mind, there was something sinister and a little forbidding about it as perhaps there always is when the wilderness takes back its own.

Nicholas and Elizabeth seemed not to share my feelings, forging ahead of me along narrow pathways, advising me where to step in order to avoid the worst of the encroaching stems and branches and pointing out various hidey-holes which they had discovered. At last, however, we arrived at the pretty wrought-iron gate which opened into the small copse beyond. Ordering the children to stay where they were, I pushed it wide and stepped into the shadow of the trees.