The Deeds of the Disturber (32 page)

Not until we had left the city behind and were traveling through a belt of suburban villas did he rouse himself. "See here, Peabody," he began, in almost his old style, "what are you after? If we don't compare notes before we get there, we may find ourselves at cross-purposes; and in the past that has led us into some embarrassing, not to say dangerous, situations."

"I will be perfectly candid with you, Emerson," I began.

"Ha," said Emerson.

"I have nothing particular in mind."

Emerson worried his chin. "Knowing you as I do, Peabody, I am inclined to believe that statement. In fact, I cannot conceive what you might be looking for. A workshop, where an endless stream of papier-mache masks are being manufactured?"

"I hardly suppose his lordship would be foolish enough to show me such a place—assuming, of course, that it exists. If there were any way you could keep him occupied while I had a little look around—"

"Put it out of your mind, Amelia. From what I have heard about Mauldy Manor, it would take ten men ten days to explore every crumbling nook and decayed cranny. And if the ushebtis came from his father's collection, he would not leave the empty display case with the label still affixed."

"Well, of course not, Emerson. We will simply have to have our wits about us and keep alert for any interesting development. I have hopes that—supposing his lordship to be the man we are after—he will let something slip in the course of conversation. I am a great believer in allowing people to talk freely and without interruption—"

"You?" said Emerson. " 'The clever-tongued, whose speech fails not'?"

I had a feeling it would be a long time before I heard the last of that coincidentally appropriate quotation, but I felt obliged to point out that it had surely been no more than that. "He could not have known we would be in the audience that day, Emerson. Since Henutmehit was a priestess of Isis, the speech was probably designed to be directed to her."

"Hmph," said Emerson.

The sun beamed down upon the grassy pastures of Richmond, and all the loveliness of spring spread out before us—wildflowers in bloom, little lambs frolicking in the fields, birds swinging and singing on blossomy boughs. I could only begin to imagine what Mauldy Manor would look like on a night of fog and rain; for even in sunlight its crumbling towers suggested the worst excesses of Gothic romance, and the veil of soft green vines that clung to the weathered walls did not soften their grim outlines.

The house was a typical hodgepodge of architectural styles, one wing being of stone and another of brick and timber in the Tudor manner. Only one wing appeared to be inhabited, and it was to the door of this, a relatively modern eighteenth-century structure, that the carriage drive led. As we descended from the brougham, a servant emerged to greet us and to direct the coachman around to the back.

I have seen more prepossessing countenances than that of the butler, but his manner was perfectly correct as he took Emerson's hat and stick and tried to take my parasol, which I of course did not allow. He then showed us into a pretty drawing room which had wide windows opening onto a stretch of lawn and a rose garden, whose bushes were leafing out, but which as yet bore no flowers.

My scheme for getting his lordship to talk would have worked well, if he had anything pertinent to say. I would scarcely have recognized him as the limp, lethargic young man we had met at the Museum. He still looked ill. The bloom of spurious health on his cheeks was the bloom of cosmetics, and he was skeletally thin. But the animation with which he greeted us, the vigor with which he sprang up from his chair, the frenetic energy of his conversation—all this was as different as night and day from that of his earlier persona.

He introduced the other guests—our acquaintance, Lord St. John, and a young man named Barnes, who was notable primarily for the prominence of his teeth and who never spoke a complete sentence, though he nodded and smiled incessantly.

Lord St. John bowed over my hand. "How brave of you to venture
out today, Mrs. Emerson. We were afraid you might be overcome by your dreadful experience last night."

I glanced at the newspapers on a nearby table—a little piece of untidiness that looked significantly out of place in an otherwise neatly ordered room.

"I take it you were unable to attend, Lord St. John."

"Unfortunately I did not learn in time of the change in the date," said his lordship smoothly. "I was otherwise engaged. But I don't know that I would have chosen to attend in any case. There is to me something distasteful and unaesthetic about exposing human remains in that fashion."

Lord Liverpool gave one of his high-pitched giggles. "What a stuffy old moralist you are becoming, Jack. It was for a good purpose, wasn't it, ma'am? Advancement of learning and all that sort of thing."

"That was the intention," I agreed. "As you have no doubt read in the newspapers, matters did not work out that way. It is a pity you were not there, gentlemen; you might have been able to assist my husband, who was unable—despite efforts that would have been impossible for most men—to protect the specimen."

"Ah, yes," murmured Lord St. John, glancing at the square of plaster that adorned Emerson's brow. "It is a great relief to your friends, Professor—among whom I hope we may count ourselves—to see you took no serious injury. I had intended to ask Mrs. Emerson about you."

"Very kind, I'm sure," said Emerson, settling himself squarely in the exact center of the sofa. "I don't suppose you expected to see me. I was not invited. But here I am."

"And we are delighted to see you," said Lord St. John.

The Earl giggled.

We were served an excellent luncheon, of which our host ate almost nothing, though he imbibed a considerable quantity of wine and talked constantly. A question of mine concerning the history of the house prompted his burst of volubility, and I was surprised to find the idle, uneducated young man so well informed and so intensely interested. His monologue continued through three courses, recounting tales I had heard and others I had not.

Queen Elizabeth had slept in the Great Bedchamber and had been entertained with a masque, a moonlight hunt, and the usual orations. The Headless Courtier was a souvenir of this visit; according to Lord Liverpool, he had been discovered by the then-Earl in the bedchamber
of the queen, in the very act of forcing his attentions upon her. She had certainly screamed loudly enough—but not until after the Earl entered. Guilty or innocent, the would-be ravisher had gone to the block like a gentleman, without betraying his queen; so one could hardly blame him for venting his annoyance on the descendants of the man who had been the cause of his untimely demise.

"Shame on you, Ned," said Lord St. John, laughing. "That is not a fit story for a lady like Mrs. Emerson."

I assured him I was not at all offended. "I do not greatly admire Elizabeth. She seems to me to have exhibited all the ruthless cruelty of her Tudor ancestry, but in a typically female fashion. I have no doubt the poor headless gentleman was innocent—of that offense, at any rate."

"The solution to the mystery is beyond even your powers," said Lord St. John with a whimsical smile. "So long ago as that—"

"No mystery is insoluble, Lord St. John," I replied coolly. "It is simply a question of how much time and effort one is willing to spend."

Lord St. John raised his glass in mute capitulation. His slight, twisted smile might have been viewed by some as decidedly sinister.

As the Earl continued his narrative, I began to understand his mood. It was pride of lineage that inspired him; his eyes shone and his thin cheeks glowed with febrile color when he spoke of the long unbroken line of gallant men and handsome ladies who were his ancestors. (History has a kindly way of glossing over little faults like brigandage, slaughter, piracy, and assaults on women, especially when the perpetrators possess titles and landed estates.)

I did not remark on this, as I might ordinarily have done, for it was only too apparent that the miserable youth could not admit, even to himself, that he was the last of his line. Firmly, and yet with a strange air of defiance, he spoke of marrying, and of holding in his arms a son who would inherit his name and titles. A feeling akin to pain stole over me as I listened. This boy would never live to see his son. Even if he succeeded in begetting an heir, the child and its unhappy mother would be infected with the same disease that was slowly killing him. Lord St. John, who was across the table from me, seemed similarly affected; his face had lost its mocking smile, and when Liverpool mentioned a certain young lady as one who might be worthy of the honor of becoming the Countess of Liverpool, St. John bit his lip with such vigor that a line of crimson droplets sprang up.

It was not difficult for me to persuade Lord Liverpool to show us around the house, whose appointments and design I praised extravagantly, to his obvious pleasure. Only the eighteenth-century wing was
in use; but the Queen's Bedchamber had been preserved in all its state, although the draperies hung in tatters and an agitated rustling betrayed the residence of mice in the mattress.

At the end of the Long Gallery in the Tudor wing—which was filled with paintings of dubious merit but undoubted age—I noticed a heavy door whose massive dark oak timbers and heavy hinges spoke of venerable antiquity. In my impetuous fashion I tried the handle. "It is locked," I exclaimed. "Are the treasure rooms and the dungeons there, your lordship? Will I see skeletons hanging from rusting chains, and horrid implements of torture?"

My little joke eluded Lord Liverpool. He stood staring in apparent consternation; but Lord St. John burst into a peal of laughter.

"That would be quite to your taste, would it not, Mrs. Emerson? I fear the skeletons are in the closets, not in the dungeons. That door leads to the oldest part of the house, but it has been shut up for many years. You wouldn't want to go there. It is full of cobwebs, mice, even a few bats."

"Bats do not bother me in the slightest," I assured him. "The pyramids and tombs of Egypt are infested with the creatures and I am quite accustomed to them."

"Ah, but the rotted floors and fallen plaster would bother you," Lord St. John said. "Isn't that right, Ned?"

"Oh. Oh yes, quite right. Wouldn't want you spraining one of those pretty ankles, Mrs. Emerson. Er—hope you don't mind my saying that, Professor?"

"Not at all," Emerson purred. "Mrs. Emerson does have nicely turned ankles. I am gratified you should take notice of them, your lordship."

I hastily drew Emerson away.

He had said very little thus far, but he came into his own when we inspected the late Earl's collection of antiquities. Nothing aroused his passion so much as the wanton looting and dispersal of antiquities that had prevailed in the earlier period of Egyptian exploration and that was still going on, despite the efforts of the Antiquities Department to stop it.

"He ought to have been hanged," Emerson exclaimed, referring to the late Earl. "He and all his peers! Look at this, Peabody—Old Kingdom for a certainty, similar in style to the mastabas of Ti and Mereruka—stolen from God knows where—"

The object to which he referred in such vigorous terms was a limestone block covered with exquisite low relief. It depicted part of a scene of hunting in the marshes. The central figure was that of a cat with a
fish in its mouth, rendered with a playful affection and detailed refinement that placed it high among the ranks of artistic masterpieces. The ancients trained these animals to assist them in the hunt. This one wore a collar, and its resemblance to the cat Bastet was astonishing—or perhaps not so astonishing, since she was a descendant of the same line. Perhaps a descendant of this very cat? An amusing and fascinating speculation . . .

His lordship was more entertained than offended by Emerson's criticism. "Yes, the old boy was a robber, all right. But see here, Professor, everybody did it."

Seeing that Emerson was about to make an angry remark, I intervened, for it was not in our best interests to annoy the young man. "It is certainly not Lord Liverpool's fault, Emerson. What a lovely piece! We brought a cat back with us from Egypt one year, your lordship; this is the very image of Bastet."

"Is that so, ma'am?"

"Ned," said Lord St. John in a flat expressionless voice, "is very fond of cats."

"Oh yes, yes. Love the little creatures. Stables are full of 'em," Lord Liverpool added somewhat vaguely.

There was nothing else in the collection to rival the limestone relief, though of course Emerson fussed and fumed over every scarab. The Earl then indicated a door at the far end of the room.

"The poor old mummy's next-to-the-last resting place," he said with a grin. "Not much left there now she's gone; I mean to turn the room into a sitting room one day—after I marry."

I opened the door and looked in. "Ah, most interesting. It was from this chamber that cries and groans were heard on the night of the full moon, and bric-a-brac broke of its own accord."

Lord Liverpool laughed, throwing his head back. The tendons in his thin neck stood out like strings. "A fetching tale, wasn't it? The girl was let go—not by me, I don't deal with such things—by the housekeeper—said she was lazy. Can't blame the little baggage for making a few shillings off us."

I marked the unevenness of his speech, and the fading of the color in his face, and glanced at Emerson. He nodded slightly. After making a cursory tour of the room which, as his lordship had said, contained nothing of interest except a fine set of canopic jars, with the lids carved like the heads of the mortuary deities, we thanked him and took our leave.

An involuntary sigh escaped my lips as the carriage rolled smoothly
down the graveled drive. "Tired, Peabody?" Emerson asked, tossing his hat onto the seat and loosening his cravat.

"Not so much physically tired as inexpressibly sad, Emerson. How oppressive is the atmosphere of that house!"

"Don't spout Gothic nonsense," Emerson grumbled. "The inhabited part of the house is bright, modern, well-kept . . . Peabody, I told you not to touch any of the furniture in the Elizabethan room; you have got soot or grease on your hands."