Dorothy Eden (27 page)

‘But you’ve just said Amalie isn’t Blane’s wife,’ Lady Malvina retorted.

A look of uncertainty crossed Ambrose’s face. Lady Malvina pounced on it.

‘Don’t you think the court might be a little aware of your ambitions too, Ambrose? And if you can’t prove these extraordinary statements it isn’t going to look very well for you.’

‘I’ve got to prove them!’ Ambrose said with intensity. ‘That’s why I’ve come here. I intend to face this man you call you son and Amalie with some very suspicious facts. There’s a newly-erected gravestone in the British cemetery at Port of Spain. It has on it only :
Evan St John. Aged 35 years. Died at sea.’

‘What of it?’

‘You heard in court the story of one of Blane’s miraculous escapes, how once he was the sole survivor when his ship sank in a hurricane. But a thing that didn’t come out was that he came ashore, after floating on a spar for ten days, with a dead man.’

‘And you’re telling me the dead man’s name was Evan St John.’

‘That’s what one assumes.’

‘What a tragic story!’ cried Lady Malvina. ‘Poor Blane, in those desperate straits, and to see his last companion die.’

‘You don’t understand what I’m getting at,’ Ambrose exclaimed impatiently.

‘Oh, yes, I do, you crafty devil!’ Lady Malvina was beyond politeness now. Her voice rose richly with anger and contempt. ‘You’re suggesting it was Blane who died, and this man came ashore to step into his shoes. He had seen the advertisements for the heir to Mallow, and concocted a plot, with the aid of his wife and son, to come and take possession.’

‘Having, in those ten days at sea, in desperate straits, got all Blane’s history from him,’ said Ambrose, with some smugness. ‘You must admit, Aunt, that it’s a neat plot.’

‘And this woman Samantha?’

‘Or Sammie, as she was known. Blane’s wife, of course. Whom I gather turned up most inconveniently to denounce this impostor. Or to share in the spoils, of course.’

Lady Malvina sat very quietly for a moment. She wanted another drink, but she was afraid her hand would tremble too much to pour it. And she wouldn’t ask Ambrose to do it for her. She would be ashamed ever to ask him to do the smallest thing.

‘Admit, Aunt Malvina, that you always knew this man wasn’t your son. Oh, I know you hadn’t seen him since he was a boy of sixteen. And I agree that this fellow has a certain similarity, he’s tall and dark and has a look of wildness. But a mother must know her own son instinctively. And you didn’t know this man. I swear it.’

‘Ambrose, you’re impertinent!’

‘I see you have your pearls,’ Ambrose said softly. ‘That must have pleased you, when you thought they were gone forever. And you like being back at Mallow. You enjoy your return to importance. You could have been just an impoverished old lady living unnoticed in some insignificant place. But with your son home all this has changed. It was very lucky for you, wasn’t it, Aunt Malvina? Even if you had to perjure yourself in court, and risk what would happen to you at the hands of these strangers.’

‘You have no real evidence of all this,’ Lady Malvina said hoarsely.

‘No, but I shall have when I’ve put my story together with Sarah’s.’

‘Sarah’s?’

‘Sarah Mildmay, of course. She’s clever, isn’t she? And attractive, too.’

‘That girl! What has she to do with this?’ Lady Malvina’s face crumpled into bewilderment and despair. ‘When Blane hears this he’ll be furious. He liked her, as I did.’

‘But it isn’t Blane, is it? Is it, Aunt Malvina?’

Lady Malvina saw the long handsome face before her in a haze. Was it true that her son was dead, and that this cold clever young man was the new Lord Mallow? Was she to lose everything, even Titus?

Titus!

Lady Malvina raised her sagging body. She got slowly to her feet. Her cap was askew, her hair tumbling down, her skirts crumpled and bunched, but she drew herself very erect. Her head was high, her eyes blazing with triumph.

‘Come with me, Ambrose. Come and take another look at this.’

She led him into the hall, to the foot of the stairs. All the lamps were alight, and the portrait glowed in the radiant light.

‘Look!’ she said commandingly. ‘You’ve seen Titus. Can you deny the likeness? Can any inscription on a tombstone or any marriage register explain that away? Can you say that boy can be anything but Blane’s son?’

She pointed with her thick ringed finger. Her voice rang out magnificently. ‘There’s the heir to Mallow!’

Below stairs, Jim the stable boy came bursting unceremoniously into the kitchen.

‘I heered the church bell tolling!’ he gasped.

Everyone looked at him askance. The wind blew in the open doorway. There was no other sound but its creaking gustiness.

‘You’re hearing things, boy,’ old Betsey said at last. ‘There’s no church bell.’

Jim looked round uncertainly. He was still breathless, his eyes dark lakes of fear.

Then faintly from a long way over the marshes came the dull boom. They all heard it. Just that single sound, and then silence.

‘I telt you!’ Jim whispered. ‘Someone’s dead!’

T
HEY CAME OUT OF
the woods into the empty marshland. Blane drew reign to listen. Apart from the wind in the rustling winter grass there was no sound.

‘We can’t be far behind them,’ he said. ‘Soames would take the short cut, but after that he’d keep to the road. Amalie can’t jump ditches with a child. She doesn’t even ride well.’

‘Couldn’t Soames be carrying Titus?’

‘Perhaps. But I still can’t believe it. Why, Amalie wanted me to dismiss him two weeks ago. That was meant to be a blind, no doubt. She must be bribing him pretty heavily.’

‘What with?’ Sarah asked drily.

‘Heaven knows. The Mallow diamonds, perhaps. If Soames is fool enough.’

The horses fidgeted. The moon, coming from behind a dark streamer of cloud, showed an horizon empty of everything but wind-bent trees, a far-off farmhouse, its tawny roof blackened by night, and at the end of the curving rutted road the church tower. Not so many years ago smugglers had struggled over the marshes to lonely churches such as this one, to deposit their booty, presumably under the protection of heaven. Now the churches looked lonely and forsaken, standing a little apart from small villages or alone in the fields, with a muddy track to be negotiated by the congregation on Sundays.

‘There’s not a sound,’ said Sarah hopelessly.

‘I think they must be on the way to Yarby. Soames will have friends there. And to think the wretch lied for me at the trial.’

‘Lied?’ said Sarah sharply.

She caught his sideways glance, reckless and fatalistic.

‘You knew it all the time. But I’m done with lying now. Come, we’re wasting time.’

But just as they set forth again a deep reverberant sound boomed over the countryside.

‘What’s that?’ Sarah exclaimed.

‘The church bell!’

‘Is it tolling? Is someone dead?’

Blane spurred his horse.

‘Come on,’ he shouted. ‘The church, of course. Why didn’t I think?’

The bell didn’t ring again. There had been just that deep solitary boom to sound the alarm.

Was Amalie frantically calling for help? Or Soames? Or was it some trick concocted by both of them?

The horses galloped down the muddy track. The gate that led into the field dotted with sleeping sheep was standing open. Someone had come in a very short time ago, and in a hurry.

Then Sarah saw the horses wandering saddled but untethered, and Blane leapt off his and ran up the slope to the church door. Sarah followed, holding up her petticoats, her breath coming in gasps.

The door was open into the midnight darkness of the church.

Blane stood in the doorway. He put out an arm to bar Sarah, and whispered to her to be quiet.

For someone was talking. It was Soames. His uncultured country voice was strangely soft and persuasive.

‘It’s no use hiding up there, my lady. Bring the lad down. I’ll take him safe home. I’ll say I found him wandering in the woods.’

There was a little silence. Then Amalie’s voice, taut and full of furious anger, came from somewhere above them.

‘You’re like all the rest, Soames. You only care about Titus. No one cares about me. It’s Titus, Titus, Titus! What if I tell you he isn’t Titus, that he’s George? And that I’d never heard that other horrible name in my life?’

‘He’s Titus now, my lady. That can’t be altered.’

Soames’s voice was still quiet and persuasive, with its familiar touch of servility. He sounded as if he had all the patience in the world.

‘You only want to think so, you and your precious Mallow. What did you want to follow me for? I was only taking the boy away. Why should you think I want to harm him? Anyway he’s my son, and I can do what I like with him. I can even jump off the tower if I please. And if you try to come up here’—there was rising hysteria in her voice—‘I will.’

‘Don’t talk daft, my lady. Come down now. I promise I’ll never tell a word of what I know.’

‘You’re only bluffing, Soames! You don’t know anything!’

Soames’s voice went on patiently and calmly, as if he were relating a story.

‘I’ll say I never saw you in the summer house, my lady. With the woman, Mrs Stone. No; nor I never heard a word of what you said to her, telling her she could have the ring—worth five hundred pounds, you said it was—if she went away and said nothing about being the master’s wife. And I’ll say I never heard Mrs Stone laughing, crafty-like, and saying now she had the ring on her finger what was to stop her from having the master as well. And Titus, too. At least, she said she’d get Titus and ruin your plot. So then you said you’d arrange for the master to meet her in the summer house the next night when he got back from London. And that she might be sorry she hadn’t met him there as she’d written saying she would, because here there was the lake, and sometimes people got drowned accidentally. Oh, yes, I’ll forget I saw her running back like a wild thing through the garden.’

‘What else—have you concocted, Soames?’

‘Not concocted, my lady. I’m only saying the things I won’t tell if you send Master Titus down safe now. Such as the master being with me in the stables the next night at the time when you’d promised he’d be in the summer house to meet the woman. So it must have been someone else met her there. Someone else who went back to the house alone, slipping in by the garden door. But I won’t say none of that if you bring Master Titus down now, my lady. My lips is shut forever.’

‘She slipped!’ Amalie screamed. ‘She slipped in the mud. I’m telling you the truth! I couldn’t go for help. It would have been too late.’

Again there was the brief silence, as if the voices were lost, as if none of these terrible words had been said. Then, as footsteps began to grope on the stairs, Amalie’s voice, high and furious, echoed through the dark church.

‘Don’t come another step, Soames! I warn you! I’m deadly serious. I’ll jump with Titus. I’m right at the window.’

She must have moved sharply in the darkness for suddenly the bell gave a muted boom.

There was a gasping scream, and Amalie’s voice came involuntarily.

‘It’s dark! I can’t see where I am!’

Sarah gripped Blane’s arm in an agony.

‘Why doesn’t Titus make a sound?’

‘He’s probably asleep. I suspect Amalie put some of her own sleeping draught in his milk. Eliza said she left him with his mother to finish his tea. Amalie couldn’t risk him screaming. Listen!’

But again it was silent, and they might have been alone in the dark building.

Blane pressed her arm and whispered, ‘Stay there. I’m going to Soames.’

Quiet as his approach down the aisle was, Amalie heard it, for she suddenly gasped,

‘Who’s that? You’ve been lying, Soames. You’ve got someone there who’s heard all you said.’

Blane abandoned his caution, and shouted in the deep ringing voice with which, not long ago, he had read the lesson from the pulpit. The voice, thought Sarah painfully, of a hypocrite, a liar, a thief and an adulterer.

‘Amalie, don’t move, or the bell will strike you. Wait until I bring a light.’

‘You! I’ve had enough of you! Don’t you dare come near me!’

‘Don’t move!’

‘For you! You’d better think again this time. I’m no longer your chattel who’s not expected to have feelings. I have feelings, all right, and now they’re all hate. I’ll kill Titus rather than let him go back to you. I’ll ruin your plans. You did all this for Titus, indeed! You never cared a fig for Titus.’

Sarah could hear Blane’s swift footsteps. It was as if he could see in the dark, not tripping on the flagstones that covered older tragedies, older bones.

‘Soames and I are coming for Titus now, Amalie. Just keep quite still and you’ll be safe.’

‘You won’t get him!’ Amalie’s voice was a harsh whisper. ‘He belongs to me.’

‘He belongs to his grandmother and to Mallow Hall. And to Soames, who loves him.’

‘I’ll expose you! I’ll tell everyone in England who you are. You’ll be jailed. For years. I hope for ever.’

‘Do what you like about me, Amalie! But let us get Titus safely down.’

‘Sammie would have killed him. She was going to kidnap him one night. I stopped her. But I’m his mother, and I have a right to take him away if I like. And to do exactly what I like with him. If hurting him is what hurts you most, my
dearest
love, I’ll do it with pleasure. He’s here on the floor asleep. He won’t know a thing.’

‘Don’t you
dare
!’ Sarah couldn’t help herself. She was stumbling down the aisle, bruising herself against the high pews that she couldn’t see in the darkness. ‘You monstrous woman, don’t you dare!

‘Ah! The clever Miss Mildmay, too! I might have known. Then this is the end. I’ve finished with you all. I’m going to jump with Titus.’

‘Amalie!’

She gave a high hysterical laugh. ‘You might have started pleading sooner, Blane. As I had to do with you. But I won’t listen any more than you did. I’m going to—’

The sentence was never finished. For suddenly the great bell boomed deafeningly, and the fragments of a scream—or was that imagined, just a drift of sound out of the church’s past centuries?—were lost in the echoing sound. It seemed as if there would never be complete silence again. The decreasing circles of sound went humming on and on.