Betrayal at Blackcrest (24 page)

“He was right,” I whispered. “Derek Hawke was right about you.”

“You thought it was the big romance?”

“I suppose I did,” I replied, my voice like ice.

He chuckled. “So did she. Women are fools.”

“Yes,” I said, “we are.”

“I played the big scene yesterday after he canned the old man. Didn't have nothing to lose, thought he might even give me some money if I said I'd keep away from her. No dice, and I mean but
no
dice. He threw me out.”

“And you still let her think you were going to elope with her,” I said.

“Sure, Honora ran after me. I knew it was a losing proposition. I let her babble on. I listened to her silly plans. I was planning to move out, and I didn't want no hysterical farewell scene. So I let her talk. I played the game.”

“And Honora lost.”

“Looks that way, baby.”

“No,” I said quietly. “No one can be that cold, that callous. She is dead,
dead
! You must have some feeling.”

“It don't pay, baby. This is the twentieth century. Romeo and Juliet are way, way out of style.”

I slapped him then. I drew back my palm and smashed it against his face. It landed with a sharp impact. He cried out in shock. He stared at me with a stunned expression, and for a moment I thought he was going to seize me. I stood my ground, glaring at him with a hard, cold anger that blazed through my body. With my eyes I dared him to say or do anything. He rubbed his cheek. He nodded at me as though we were playing a game and I had scored that round. I turned and left the room, trembling with rage. I was still trembling when I got in the car.

I drove around for a long time, the anger possessing me with hard, merciless force. Thirty minutes passed, and I found myself by the edge of the river, staring at the water and the drooping willow trees. That first fury was dissipated now. It left by degrees, and I found my mind working with cold, mechanical precision. I knew what I was going to do. I couldn't wait for Alex. I couldn't wait for Martin Craig. I drove to a drugstore and purchased a flashlight. I stepped into the phone booth and dialed Alex's number. The phone rang several times. I tapped my fingernails impatiently on the instrument panel.

A woman answered. For a moment I didn't recognize her voice.

“Mr. Tanner,” I said.

“He's out. This is … his secretary.”

“Deborah Lane speaking,” I replied crisply. “This is very important. Tell him I
know for sure
. He'll understand. Tell him I've gone down to the cellars to find the … the place.”

“But, duckie—”

“Tell him to hurry,” I said.

I hung up the phone. I got into the car and drove back to Blackcrest. The gun was in the purse at my side. The flashlight was strong, its battery new. I had had enough evasion, enough of piecing together a horrible jigsaw puzzle. Now I intended to act.

18

I closed the cellar door behind me. It was not likely that anyone would come down and see it open, but I wouldn't take that chance. I shut it firmly and switched on the flashlight. The strong light swept over the area like a silver-white blade, pointing out the damp, dangerous steps and the rough brown wall with its festoons of wet green fungus. I went down the steps cautiously. I was incredibly calm, incredibly firm of purpose. Now that I knew, nothing remained but to locate the final, irrefutable evidence and be done with it. I suppose I was in shock. Grief and horror would come later, but now I moved as though in a trance.

I had the gun with me. I held it at my side, my fingers curled around the cold black metal. It was a heavy, awkward thing, and I was tempted to hide it at the foot of the steps. I did not know if I could pull the trigger if the need arose. I doubted it. For a moment I hesitated, thinking I would slip it behind the bottom step. Then I decided against it. The gun seemed unnecessarily dramatic, but there was a certain security in having it with me. I kept it in my hand.

I moved past the wine racks. I passed through the first room, trying to remember the way I had gone yesterday morning when I was pursuing the kitten. I turned down a narrow passage that brought me into a small room with rusty tools leaning against the walls. There was a shovel and a pick. The shovel had dried mud caked on it. The room was a dead end. I retraced my way and went down a second passage. It took me into the room with the kegs.

The silence of the place was unnerving. It was broken only by the faint drip of water that seeped down a wall from some invisible source. Motes of dust danced in the beam of my flashlight, and a broken cobweb swayed from the ceiling in a rhythmic motion, to and fro in the gentle current of air caused by my movement. I saw the table where the kitten had perched in such terror. I moved toward the passage I had followed yesterday.

I stumbled on a piece of wood. It clattered under my foot, and the echoes of the noise shattered the silence. The noise reverberated in the air for a moment and then died down. The silence that followed was even more intense by contrast. It seemed to be laden with inaudible noises, those same silent whispers I had sensed yesterday morning. The fumes of alcohol were overwhelming. There was, too, a sour odor, sharp and unpleasant. I switched the blade of light around the room. It glided over huge wooden kegs, washed the dank walls.

I started down the passage. I might have been in the bowels of the earth. The great weight of Blackcrest was above me, and the celing of the passage seemed to sag down, inch by inch. I could visualize a complete collapse of the foundations. I could see tons of earth and rubble falling with one sudden thud, crushing me, or worse, leaving me trapped here, buried alive. The thought was horrible. Threats of claustrophobia swept over me, and my body tightened. I gnawed my lower lip, standing still for a moment, banishing the morbid fear.

I moved on, trying not to think. This was no time for thinking. I couldn't allow my mind to swerve from its grim purpose. If I did, if I loosened one bit, lost one fraction of control, I knew I would crumble into a hysterical mass, capable of nothing but piercing screams. In a short while it would all be over. I would find what I was looking for. Alex would come. Derek Hawke would be unmasked. I would go away for a while. I would be completely alone. I would grieve, and I would come to grips with the horror of it all. Now I must not waver.

The passage made a sloping turn, widened. I was in the main passage now. The beam of my light picked out the ancient wooden doors ahead. I remembered the rusty chains I had seen on the wall of one of those cells and shuddered at the thought of them. The heels of my shoes scraped the earthen floor. The sound was magnified in the stillness. This part of the cellars was icy cold. Zephyrs of clammy air stroked my cheeks. I wondered where the air could possibly be coming from.

I was almost in that great cavern of a room at the end of the passage, the place where I had found the scarf. I passed by the doors of the cells. I stopped. I stood dead still for a moment. My heart seemed to leap in my breast; then it pattered rapidly. Every fiber of my body was taut, concentrating. I heard a noise, far behind me, coming from that section of the cellars I had already passed through. Footsteps? I could not be sure.

The noise had been there for some time, but I had been so engrossed in thought that it had not fully registered. Now it had brought me up sharp, banishing everything else. Footsteps? Had I heard footsteps? I hardly dared breathe. I stood rigid, my eyes closed.

I listened. There were no footsteps. I was nervous and on edge. I had imagined them. There was another sound. It was almost like heavy breathing, as though someone else, behind me, had paused to listen. I trembled. The cold air stroked my face and arms. How foolish. I heaved a sigh of relief. The acoustics of the place magnified each tiny noise; the echoes repeated it over and over. The air swirled around the walls, and it sounded like breathing. I gripped the flashlight and started to move on.

The sudden clatter exploded in the silence. Someone had stumbled on a piece of wood, possibly the same one I had stumbled on. It was not my overactive imagination this time. The noise was real, the echoes still ricocheting it from wall to wall. The door of the last cell was open. I darted into the cell. The beam of my light flashed on the wall, showing me the chains that hung there. I switched the light off.

I don't know how long I stayed there in the cell. Time seemed to have no meaning. There was just the darkness, and me, and that presence out there. The last echo had vanished. I listened for other sounds in the darkness, but my heart was pounding so loudly that I could not be sure that I heard anything else. I could not hear, but I could feel. I could feel that other presence, feel its evil. The evil was all around me. It seemed to come closer and closer, waiting to claim me, waiting to destroy me. My fear was a tangible thing.

Time passed. Nothing happened. There were no new noises. My body grew stiff from standing in one position for so long. Tiny pinpricks of pain jabbed my legs, and I knew they would soon be cramped if I did not move them. It was cold, terribly cold, and the clammy air swirled into the cell in icy currents. I had not noticed this coldness yesterday morning. There had certainly been no currents then, only the horrible stillness.

I had turned the flashlight off, but gradually my eyes had become accustomed to the dreadful darkness in the cell. It was no larger than eight feet square, and the ceiling was not six feet from the floor. The top of my head almost touched it. After a while I could see the outlines of the chains, dark black against the grayish black of the wall. Manacles dangled from the end of them, and I wondered what wrists had been fastened in those terrible iron bands, what person or persons had been confined in this cell, staring at the walls in darkness and surely feeling no more terror than I felt at this moment.

Centuries had passed since this cell was built. Customs had changed radically, but man had not changed at all. One of Derek Hawke's ancestors had ruled here, a blackhearted tyrant who could confine his victims in a cell, leave them to die while he carried on with his treachery, and Hawke was no different. The twentieth century had given him a civilized facade. He could not be so open in his treachery, so flamboyant in his vices, but he was no different from that earlier Hawke. These thoughts raced through my mind as I waited, listening, trembling.

I stood up straight. I rubbed my arms. The gun in my hand seemed an afterthought, a foolish piece of excess baggage that was of no use at all. I had forgotten I even had it, the fingers that gripped it numb now. Fifteen minutes had passed, perhaps thirty. No one had come down the passage. No footsteps had echoed along the walls. I switched on the flashlight. The beam landed directly on the grave in the corner of the cell.

There was no question about it. It was a grave. The mound of earth on top was loose, that around it tightly packed. I remembered the shovel I had seen earlier, its blade caked with dried mud. I stared at the mound of earth. I had been inches away from it as I leaned against the wall. It had been at my feet.

I felt none of the things I thought I should feel. I should scream, I told myself. I should faint. I was emotionless. I stared at the grave, and I thought: It is over. My part is done. I can go now. Later I can grieve.

I stepped out of the cell. I stepped directly into his arms. I did not see his face. I tried to cry out, but no sound came. I dropped the flashlight. It shattered. We were in darkness. His arms were holding me to him.

He released me. He struck a match. In its glow I could see the wide mouth, the twisted nose, the dark eyes, and the brows with their arrogant slant. He held the match over the wick of an old oil lamp. I wondered where he had found the lamp. The wick caught, glowed. The light spread slowly. He shielded the flame for a moment and then set the lamp on the floor. That flickering glow cast shadows all around us. They danced on the walls. His face was in shadow. I could see only the dark eyes.

“Deborah,” he said.

“My God! Alex. I thought you were Derek Hawke.”

They were so alike. The features were so similar.

“Did you?” He laughed quietly.

“You frightened me. I thought—”

“Did I, now?” he said.

I knew then. I sensed it. He had said nothing more, but I knew. I could feel it. Always before there had been a gentle rush of warmth the moment I heard his voice, the moment I looked into those laughing eyes. It was not there now. Now there was an instinctive fear, and it was so strong that I backed away. The dark eyes looked at me. There was no laughter in them now. I backed against the wall and stood there, looking at his face, so shadowed, so like Derek's.

“You,” I said.

“Yes. I wondered when you would discover it.”

“How? Why? What … what do you intend to do?”

“One question at a time, please,” he said. His voice was casual, a light, mocking voice that I had once found so pleasant.

“Delia—” I whispered.

“I met her at a party in Soho. She was an ardent fan of mine, had read every single book. She was beautiful and bright and full of sparkle, surrounded by a crowd of admiring males, but when she discovered who I was, she left the crowd. She came to me. Her eyes were full of awe, and she babbled for thirty minutes about the books, asked me how I got my plots, all the typical questions. I knew then that she was the one I needed. I had everything figured out, down to the last detail. I needed a woman, an actress, someone I could trust to do the job and do it without flaw.”

“What are you talking about? I don't understand.”

“My dear Deborah, do concentrate. It's my very best plot, much too good to be used in one of the books. Intricate, complicated, a stroke of genius.” His voice had a hard, arrogant quality I had never heard in it before. I did not know this man. I had never known Alex Tanner. “Perhaps I shall use it someday,” he continued, “though not in one of those cheap thrillers. No, this is too good for that.”