The Riddle of Alabaster Royal (40 page)

Sir Kendrick slanted a curious glance at him. “In what way?”

“The village, sir. It was established in Norman times. And in French,
Galerie
would mean tunnel, or even mine tunnel; and
étang
—”

“Pond!” said Sir Kendrick. “Tunnel under the pond! By Jove! I never thought of that!”

“Let's hope it doesn't refer to tunnel
in
the pond! That may well be why mining had to be abandoned here. I've seen no more of the other light. We'd best turn back, sir, and make another cast.”

“Yes, confound it— No! See there!”

An intersecting passage lay ahead and light glowed from the entrance.

“Got the bounders!” whispered Sir Kendrick, his eyes glinting wrathfully.

They crept closer and soon could hear voices. Two men by the sounds of it, engaged in an acrimonious dispute, the one voice harsh and commanding, the other full of blustering defiance.

“Cramer!” muttered Jack. “I knew—” He checked, appalled by a third voice.

“Why did you drag me down to this horrid place? You are great fools if you expect to murder me as you did my dear Papa! Captain Vespa knows—”

“Consuela!” gasped Jack, and plunged around the corner.

One sweeping glance revealed Lord Malcolm Alperson and Durward Cramer facing each other angrily, and Consuela sitting on a pile of debris against the wall, her dress torn, her face dirty and bruised.

A blazing rage wiped out sanity, and he charged forward.

The two men jerked around. Cramer swung up a long-barreled duelling pistol. Jack leapt and kicked out. The pistol exploded deafeningly as it flew from Cramer's hand, and a shower of silt poured from the roof. Cramer screamed a curse and springing to the attack was met with a flashing upper-cut that sent him sailing backward.

Consuela screamed, “Look out!”

Jack turned, crouching.

Lord Alperson, wielding a large chunk of rock that was clearly intended to brain him, was being foiled by Consuela, who had jumped onto his back and was beating frantically at his head. The peer cursed and wrenched the girl away, sending her sprawling.

“You filthy swine!” roared Jack, and levelled his lordship with the right that was so much admired by his fellow officers.

“I don't like to hit an old man.” He slipped an arm around Consuela, who had flown to cling to him, laughing and weeping in a paroxysm of joyous relief. “But you deserved it.”

“He more than deserved it,” drawled Sir Kendrick. “Perhaps you two—charming gentlemen will be so good as to explain your presence here?”

Cramer struggled to his feet, holding onto the wall for support. “I was just curious, is all,” he said sullenly.

“And you,” said Sir Kendrick, waving Jack's long-barrelled pistol towards Lord Alperson, “were you also overcome by—curiosity?”

“I'll overcome your damned bastard,” howled Alperson, dabbing a bloody handkerchief at his mouth. “He's curst near knocked out one of my teeth!”

“And you have not answered my question,” purred Sir Kendrick.

“They can answer our questions in Constable Blackham's gaol.” Jack scanned Consuela anxiously. “Did they hurt you, Miss Meadowlark?”

“That horrid old man choked me,” she said.

“Horrid old man, is it,” snarled Alperson stuffily. “Vixen! You're damned lucky I didn't—”

“And I am still waiting,” said Sir Kendrick.

“The chit was following Cramer,” growled his lordship. “The everlasting idiot led her straight here!”

“To—what, exactly?” asked Sir Kendrick. “What did you think to find, Cramer? Gold and gems, perchance? The hoard of some old-time pirate?”

“I didn't know 'cause I wasn't told,” said Cramer. “So I came to see. But I didn't find nothing.”

“Because there was nothing to find,” said Sir Kendrick sweetly.

“Except a tool for blackmail, perhaps,” said Jack.

Sir Kendrick's smooth brow wrinkled. “Blackmail? I am lost, dear lad.”

“These tunnels, sir. They evidently run for miles underground. Perhaps they were worked centuries ago. Perhaps most people had forgotten how extensive they are. I think that's why the main tunnel was sealed off and made to look as if all mining had ended there. Lord knows where these branches lead, and I agree with you that there are probably other levels.”

Bewildered, Consuela drew back from his arm and looked up at him. “This, I do not find at all important. Why should anyone care?”

“Someone cared enough to murder your father. That's what the marks on the paintings, and the bowl and the vase, should have shown us. They were not scratches, but cracks. Mr. Jones found out about all these unsuspected tunnellings. He realized that the ground above would be unstable. Perhaps he began to entertain suspicions that he dared not speak of until he had proof, so he portrayed the ground as being cracked, only we were too blind to see it. At the end he must have learnt, too late, that he was right; something was to be built here.” He looked up at his father. “Not an orphanage, I think, sir.”

Sir Kendrick glanced at Lord Alperson and raised one enquiring eyebrow.

“Didn't I tell you?” growled his lordship, dragging a pistol from his pocket and aiming it steadily at Jack. “I
said
he knew!”

It struck home like a physical blow. The bits and pieces, the half-formed and angrily rejected theories came together and formed a near-complete pattern. A terrible pattern, because the wrong man was the leader. With a choked gasp, Jack whipped around to confront his father.

Sir Kendrick sighed. “I had to be sure,” he murmured.

“Oh—God!” Jack searched the handsome features in desperation. “
No!
No, you
can't
be in league with these—jackals?”

“Hey!” Offended, Cramer sprang at him and backhanded him across the face, so that he reeled back until the wall supported him; and still his eyes never left his father.

Sir Kendrick said mildly, “There is no call for that, Durward. Had you not bungled your every opportunity, this ugly mess could have been avoided. I really am sorry, John. It was a simple case of my being in desperate need of money. A great deal of money.”

Jack wiped blood from his lips mechanically, conscious only of the deeper hurt that seemed to be tearing him apart. “You have funds,” he said, striving to comprehend. “The houses—the coaches—”

“None of which can be disposed of without time and a fuss,” said Sir Kendrick, with a rueful smile. “And I am eager to leave these delightful but so—ah, constricting shores.”

“Because of your new woman?”

The smile was wiped away. Sir Kendrick's glare caused Cramer to step back nervously. “Do not
dare
to use that tone in connection with my dear lady! She is the most glorious creature who ever lived! A far cry from the wailing, snivelling fool who mothered you! Stay back—or by God, I'll shoot you where you stand!”

Jack had started forward, but that such a threat should be levelled at him was past comprehension, and it rendered him so sick at heart that he stood silenced and motionless.

“I didn't know what love was until I met her,” went on Sir Kendrick, his voice softening. “Beautiful, clever, courageous, loyal; with a shape like Venus and a nature passionate beyond the ken of our cold-blooded English women!”

Consuela stepped to Jack's side and said brokenly, “I am so sorry, dear Captain Jack! I am
so
sorry!”

Jack's eyes were strangely blurred. None of it could be real. The gracious and noble gentleman he had loved and admired all his days was not really standing here looking at him with such amused contempt. Anguished, he thought, ‘Please,
please,
God, let it be another of my hideous hallucinations! Let me wake up now.' But he did not wake up, and as from a great distance he heard his own voice: “And for—her you are willing to turn your back on your country? To abandon my mother and—and your mistress … all your friends? To murder and lie and cheat?”

“You must try to understand, dear boy,” said Sir Kendrick. “I cannot live without my love. And I cannot live in England
with
her.”

“Nor—in India?”

Consuela gave a startled exclamation.

“How perceptive of you.” Sir Kendrick bowed. “In the eyes of her people or mine, our alliance is unthinkable. Much I care for their stupid shibboleths. But she cares, and I won't have her humiliated. So I've bought us an island. Our own small paradise, where I shall build my lady a palace so that she may live in the setting she deserves.”

Wearily, Jack muttered, “Which will cost great sums of money. So you planned to sell Alabaster Royal. You knew Sherry wouldn't stand in your way.”

“Of course he wouldn't. He was the one with the looks, as you once said. Looks and charm. But he lacked my ambition. He was careless and easily swayed.” Sir Kendrick strolled to the pile of rocks Consuela had left, and seated himself with his customary grace. “I always knew that you were the one to be reckoned with,” he said. “The one who thought things through and who led. When he was killed, and you came home alive, I knew you would be difficult. I was right. Only look at how you persisted in your search for those confounded canvasses! When you started inspecting the snuff jar, I knew you were getting very close, and that if you ever saw the bowl Jones had fashioned, you'd surely put two and two together.”

“The bowl you commissioned for me, sir?” said Jack ironically.

Sir Kendrick chuckled. “Well, it wasn't, of course. I commissioned it from Jones thinking to present it to my love as a reminder of how we won our island, and I instructed him to deliver it to me. It never dawned on me that he'd actually finished the curst thing, nor that he'd included those indications of faulted earth. If I'd had the remotest notion that the stupid fool had actually sent it to Richmond and that it had fallen into your Mama's greedy clutches, I'd have had it destroyed at once. Alas…” He shrugged. “‘The best laid schemes of mice and men…'”

Jack drew a hand across his eyes. “If you'd only
asked
me! I'd have done—anything you wished.”

“You forget, when I asked you to stay in Richmond, you refused. How could I believe you'd be willing to give me Alabaster without so much as coming down here to look it over? When you'd found out its true value, would you have handed to me the whole proceeds of the sale? The leases? The rights-of-way? And if you had caught just a whiff of a suspicion that I meant to take the funds and abandon your foolish Mama? What then? No, no. My hope was that you would come down here and be as revolted as any sensible man would be and allow me to—shall we say—dispose of the property. When it became clear to me that you liked the place, I knew you'd start sniffing around, and that sooner or later, you'd come at the truth. And I was right, wasn't I? I suppose you recognized my back in Preston Jones' confounded May Day painting.”

He should have. His mind had been trying to tell him, but he hadn't wanted to hear.…

Sir Kendrick chuckled. “I thought so. And the half-wit told you about the coaching accident, no?”

Lord! How could he have been so blind? This morning Dicky-Boy had been staring at his father's portrait—not at the miniature coaches! The reason behind the lad's sly giggles, the knowing winks, was clear now, and so tragically different from what he'd supposed. He said wretchedly, “Couldn't you at least have helped the little girl?”

“I wanted to. It was a sad affair. But I couldn't risk being involved in such a murky business at that particular time. And now here I am in another murky business. I swear I didn't want things to take this turn, John. I tried very hard to dissuade you—one way and another. But you have that miserably dogged Scots streak in your make-up. You would persist. And tonight, when you were so damned determined to come here, on the very night we'd planned a meeting, I could see that you'd already put most of it together. You tried, but when you came out to the coach just now, you couldn't disguise the fact that you were hit hard. Poor lad. You were always so devoted.”

“Aah!” Consuela tore her eyes from Jack's haggard, stricken face and turned on Sir Kendrick in a fury. Ignoring Lord Alperson's shrill cackle of mirth and Cramer's cheer, she raged, “How can you hurt him so? Does it matter nothing that he loves you? You are a wicked, wicked man, and that you destroyed my dear father is beyond words vile, but—to plot the murder of your own
son?
Faugh! You would disgust even a savage!”

Indignant, Sir Kendrick exclaimed, “Good gracious, I should hope so! As if I would do such a thing!”

Consuela stared at him in bewilderment, but her response was halted by Jack's upraised hand.

He said in a flat colourless voice, “Why bother to deny it, sir? Was it not at your instigation that Cramer ran me off the road that first day? Didn't you arrange the ambush that would hopefully break my neck? Were you ignorant of the fact that I was shot at in the churchyard, or that your—your beautiful lady intended my death?”

“Let us say,” replied Sir Kendrick, demurely, “that it was a—er—combined effort. As for having plotted the murder of my son—never! I loved Sherborne.”

Despite himself, Jack flinched.

Consuela hissed, “
Canaille!
You have another son!”

“Oh, no,” said Sir Kendrick mildly.

Lord Alperson chuckled. Interested, but mildly confused, Cramer frowned.

Jack's bowed head shot up and he met the long-lashed dark eyes that were now so openly laughing at him.

“Do you know,” said Sir Kendrick, “it never ceased to baffle me that you, such a very clever fellow, never guessed. Did you not once look at yourself and then look at me and at Sherborne, and wonder? Our colouring alone should have told you that your brother inherited my noble Norman lineage. What is noble about you, John? Your nondescript Saxon brown hair? Your hazel eyes? Didn't you wonder why you stand an inch under six feet, whereas Sherborne and I are three inches
above
that mark? Good God! Were you quite blind to your hopeless inferiority?”