Her Ladyship's Companion (23 page)

Harold stood rooted to the spot. His eyes were downcast, hooded in shadow. Only his mouth moved in his frozen face, his lips pushing in and out. He had a stark look, giving his placid visage a dignity she’d never seen there before. His hands clenched and unclenched, clenched and unclenched. “You came to me for help, Melissa,” he said. “Thank you. I knew I could trust you.”

“I don’t want thanks. I want you to
do
something,” she said with more frankness than tact. “Think. What are we going to do? Tell me.”

Harold didn’t lift his eyes. Melissa thought: This must be painful for him. I’ve got to make allowances. He’s a kind man, and he’ll have to turn his own cousin over to the law. There’ll be a trial, public disgrace. Or perhaps Giles can be made to leave the country quietly. Melissa tried to picture him a penniless exile in some European city. Her mind revolted. Giles would never submit to that.

“Have you talked to Lady Dorothy yet?” he asked.

“No. I couldn’t. I was afraid the shock would kill her. I haven’t told anyone yet. Who could I expect to believe me?”

It might be, if they were clever and strong, that a public scandal could be avoided. “If we offered them money—Giles and Sir Adrian, I mean—and if we threatened them with exposure, maybe they would agree to go abroad.”

Harold sighed. His face was pale and heavy. He looked much older, his own age or more. Silently he took her arm and urged her in the direction of the cliffside, out of the woods, to where the sea gulls were crying on the wind. “Come out here,” he said. “We must talk. It’s not going to be easy. It’s all been much harder than I ever dreamed it would be. There simply is no end to it all. It never does end. Do you understand what I mean?”

Melissa wished he would show a bit more concern and less philosophy. She wanted to confront Giles at once. Robbie was in danger during every minute they wasted here. “No,” she said impatiently. “I don’t know what you mean. Can we go back to the house now? We must find Giles as soon as possible.”

“He’s not at the house,” Harold said quietly. “That’s why I brought you out here. I wanted to show you where he is.”

“Out here?” What did he mean by that? There was nothing here but the cliffs and the woods and below them the sea moving slackly in and out between the rocks. There was nobody in sight, and Melissa was in no mood for puzzles. “Please, Mr. Bosworth,” she pleaded, “there’s no time for this. We have to find Giles. Don’t you understand? He’s deadly, incredibly deadly.”

“Not anymore.” Harold’s voice was stronger, rising over the wind. The sea breeze was in his face, pushing his thin blond hair away from his brow. He became excited, almost jubilant. “He won’t hurt me again. You didn’t have to tell me that Giles hated me. I’ve always known that. He fooled the others, but he never fooled me. I knew.”

“I didn’t,” Melissa said in a small voice. “I swear I never had any idea.” She, too, looked out into the sea. It wasn’t easy to admit to herself what she had felt, but it was all over now. She might as well be honest. She couldn’t love a murderer. Everything had broken apart and fallen back into place so differently. It couldn’t have been love. She’d been dazzled, fooled, overwhelmed, enslaved. Use what word you liked. It had felt like love. But it couldn’t have been. “Where is Giles?” she asked.

“Down there. He’s in the sea.” Harold’s face had a look of unearthly calm. “He didn’t get very far after all, you see, Melissa. There’s a path over there that leads down to the caves. You don’t have to look far at all.”

The sunlight spilled over the breakers below. Melissa wished Harold would stop acting so peculiarly and help her. It was desperately important. Did he mean to say that Giles had gone down the cliffside to the shingle? A full, incoming tide was no time for rock climbing. “Mr. Bosworth, please,” she said distractedly, “I know it’s hard for you. But we’ve got to find him. Do you have any idea where he might be?”

Harold nodded slowly. “I told you.” He pointed down to the water. “He’s in the sea cave, just where I left him. The dead don’t walk. The water may wash him out to sea when the tide falls. Or then again, it may leave him in the cave. I don’t know. But the dead don’t walk on their own.”

“Dead!” Melissa blurted in astonishment. “What do you mean … dead?”

“I took him down here to the sea, Melissa. I said I had something to show him. He thought it was something about Miss Coburn, you see, because this is just where she went over, poor lady. So he came with me. Then we walked down here.” He unbuttoned his jacket, and it swung open. Some heavy object in his pocket was distorting the fall of the cloth and making one side swing back and forth like a pendulum. “It was early, before ten o’clock. That was good because the caves are still uncovered then. But it was bad because I had to wait a long time for them to fill up. They didn’t hear the shot up at the house because of the ocean. This is a very good spot for that. You can’t even hear screams from here. I had to do it, you know. There was no other way.”

Melissa felt sick. She could feel her knees shaking beneath her. Giles dead. It was impossible to believe. “No other way?” she repeated dully. “There must have been another way. Whatever he’d planned to do, there must have been another way.”

“No, Melissa,” he said softly. “It was the kindest way. It was very quick. And the ocean will come and wash all the blood away. He would have killed me if he could have. So I had to do it. I had no choice. I knew all about them, Giles and Adrian. They never fooled me. But it was very clever of you to discover them. How did you do it, by the way?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Melissa said brokenly. Giles was dead. Giles had been shot to death by this posturing old fool. She closed her eyes and tried to blank out the sunlight and the whole world. How could he have done it?

“No, I don’t suppose it matters. There was blood, a lot of it. But the sea will clean that up when the water fills the cavern. It should be full soon. I didn’t get any on me. I was careful about that. He didn’t know I had the gun until the last minute.” Harold patted the pocket of his jacket fondly. “It took only one shot, and he stopped moving at once. I’ve been waiting up here until the tide goes out and I can go in for lunch.”

“The only way?” Melissa began to laugh hysterically, “And then you’ll go in to lunch?” And she’d thought he was too weak to help her! He was a dozen times more ruthless than she’d ever be.

“This was supposed to be the end of it all,” Harold told her gravely. “Robbie would have been gone. There was the fire and then the robbery and then the bridge and that laudanum to finish it off Giles would take the blame and die out here on the cliffs. That was the way it was supposed to go.” •

“What do you mean, that’s the way it was ‘supposed’ to go?” Melissa demanded. After a minute she said, “And how did you know about the laudanum? I didn’t tell you about the laudanum.”

They were very silent. Then Melissa said, “How did you know that this is where Miss Coburn fell? It could have been anywhere along the cliffs.”

“You see, Melissa,” Harold said gently and regretfully, “you weren’t supposed to come into it at all. It was all very simple: first Robbie, then Giles, and then Dorothy. Very, very simple. Miss Coburn could have lived. You could have lived. I don’t have anything against you.” He took the gun out of his pocket.

Melissa felt a shaking cold work its way from the pit of her stomach to her extremities. For the first time she looked straight into his eyes. His pupils were contracted to pinpoints. He was quite mad. It was apparent that she’d made a dreadful mistake.

Melissa began to back away from him. “I don’t understand what you mean,” she said weakly.

“It’s taken me such a long time with Robbie.” Harold’s brow creased fretfully. He gestured with his free hand petulantly. “It was going to be so easy, so ... so elegant. I wedged the door to the nursery closed with a little chip of wood. The fire was just right, smoky. It would have killed him without harming the structure of the manor house. Then I left the key there. Everyone should have blamed Giles. They should have suspected Giles.
He
was the one who stood to gain a fortune. But nothing happened. Robbie didn’t die, and nobody suspected anything. It all went wrong somehow.”

Harold frowned down at the dueling pistol and ran his hand fondly down the smooth barrel. “I’ve reloaded it,” he said. “It carries a single bullet because it’s sporting that way. I always try to kill with a single bullet. It worked on Giles. Did you know that? I wonder if I should use a pistol on Robbie. He’s been so hard.” He considered the matter with calm concentration.

Melissa tried to edge to one side. Harold moved closer, cutting off the path to the woods and forcing her back toward the cliff. “Why do you want to do this, Harold?” she asked in an unnatural voice. She tried to sound low and soothing. “You know I don’t want to hurt you. I’m your friend.”

Harold glared at her resentfully. “No, you’re not. I had Robbie finished for good out at the summerhouse. You interfered. You had no right to do that. You’d stop me now if you could.”

Melissa backed away from him. Then she couldn’t back any farther. She had come to the edge of the cliff.

“It’s all your fault. If I’d gotten Robbie out of the way, Giles would have been the guilty one. Nobody would have been surprised if he had killed himself then. But now there are going to be all kinds of questions. I may have to wait months before I can kill Robbie. And it’s all your fault.” He grimaced at her with an outraged expression,

Harold wrapped both hands lovingly around the butt of the pistol and pointed it directly at her. Suddenly it seemed very important to know one thing, to know why this was happening to her. “Why, Harold?” she asked pleadingly. “Why have you done all this?”

Something in her voice must have reached him. He blinked. The glazed look left his face. “Why, for the money, of course. Dorothy’s money,” he said reasonably.

“I’m sorry for Robbie. But it was the only way to get the money from him.”

“The money. What do you mean, the money?” Melissa asked blankly. She was beyond consideration for her own safety, beyond surprise. Soon she would be dead just like Giles, leaving Robbie alone with this madman. “What does Robbie have to do with Dorothy’s money?”

“It’s the Tarsin money. Giles and Robbie, they’re the last ones, the very last. When they die, there’s no one to inherit with the name in the fifth degree. I looked it up. That breaks the entail. Then the money goes to the female line. And the only one left is Dorothy. She gets it all. And she’s left all her own personal fortune to me. So when I kill her, I get all of it. You see how simple it all is?”

“You’re mad,” she gasped, reckless of safety.

“Not mad,” Harold said indignantly. “I have a right to it.” Strangely, in his agitation, his voice had gone high and squeaky. “I have a right to it all. She cheated me. I have a right to kill her and take the money.” His face creased like a petulant child about to cry,

He yelled at her, waving the pistol about, “She made me nothing, nothing, do you hear me? She stole away everything I might have been by her bloody whoring around. I’m Harforth’s son, Harforth’s, do you hear. I should have been the eldest son. I should have had the title, the estates. But that would have been too embarrassing for her highness. So she didn’t marry him until J was already born. She gave him a nice clean son with a nice clean claim to the title, and she made me a bastard, all to protect her own damn bloody name!”

Harold stood in front of her, gasping for breath. His eyes were spinning pools of insanity. “Oh, yes, I’m going to enjoy killing Dorothy. But until Robbie is dead, I’m going to be, oh, so very careful of her life. She mustn’t die until the time is right. Oh, no. She’ll have to wait her turn. And then maybe I can make it last a long time. I haven’t decided yet how I’m going to do it.”

Harold looked at her, and Melissa shamed herself by cowering away from him. It wasn’t death but his madness she feared. Harold shook his head sadly. “I liked you, Melissa. You were nice to me, and you’re pretty. I would have liked to let you go. But it was Giles you wanted all along. I don’t mind that so much. Anna’s the one who is going to marry me. I’ll have money enough to marry a dozen like her if I choose, but she’s the one I want. I would have let you live if you hadn’t been so prying. You shouldn’t have listened to Giles and Adrian like that, you know. That’s what got you into all this trouble. I don’t suppose,” he went on conversationally, “that you know where Turner and his friend have gone. The robber fellow. Do you know where they’ve gone? I have to find them and kill them, too.” He looked at her hopefully.

Melissa was amazed he should expect her to tell. Her mouth dropped open in confusion. Then he raised the pistol a fraction of an inch, and she found her voice. “London,” she said desperately. “It was somewhere in London. I’ll think of it in a minute.”

Harold shook his head again. “You’re lying, Melissa,” he said sorrowfully. “You don’t lie very well. I like that. Most people lie to me all the time. It was a smart thing to say, though.” He continued in a practical vein. “They won’t be hard to find. They’re only simple farmers.” He was supremely confident. “If only Giles hadn’t gotten to them first. I was going to pay them, I truly was, but I’d overspent my allowance. I guess that was pretty stupid of me.”

Melissa tried to move to one side unobtrusively. Harold raised the gun to aim it for the last time. “It’s cruel to keep you hoping, Melissa, and I don’t want to be cruel to you. I do only what I have to. You’ll go to join Giles. He’s washing out to sea right now. You’ll like that. There’ll be blood all over,” he said regretfully. “I’d hoped to avoid that. Maybe you’d just go off the edge of the cliff for me. Helena did. She was so frightened. Would you? It’ll be all the same in the end, you know.”

Melissa watched his index finger tighten on the trigger. In desperation she crouched to throw herself at right angles to the shot. She had no real chance of escape.

“I’ve got a better target for you, Harold.”

The voice came suddenly from the woods. Melissa’s breath caught in her throat. It was Giles’s voice.