Джорджетт Хейер - The Talisman Ring

“Oh, devil a doubt!” answered Ludovic, testing the dagger’s sharpness with one slender forefinger.

“A cousin of yours masquerading about in a loo-mask?”

“Was he?” said Ludovic, interested. “Lord yes, that’s Basil all over! He’d run no risk of being recognized.”

“And you think he came here to murder you in your bed?” demanded Sir Hugh.

For answer, Ludovic held up the dagger.

Sir Hugh looked at it in profound silence, and then said weightily, “I’ll tell you what it is, Lavenham, he’s a demmed scoundrel. I never heard of such a thing!”

Eustacie, who had sunk into a chair, raised a very white face from her hands, and said in a low, fierce voice: “Yes, and if he does not go to the scaffold I myself will kill him! I will make a sacred vow to kill him!”

“No, don’t do that!” said Sir Hugh, regarding her with misgiving. “You can’t go about England killing people, whatever you may do in your own country.”

“Yes, I can, and I will,” retorted Eustacie. “To fight a duel, that is one thing! Even to try to take what belongs to Ludovic I can pardon! But to try to stab Ludovic in the dark, while he sleeps, voyons , that is an infamy of the most vile!”

“There’s a great deal in what you say,” acknowledged Sir Hugh, “but to my mind what you need is a sip of brandy. You’ll feel the better for it.”

“I do not need a sip of brandy!” snapped Eustacie.

“Well, if you don’t, I do,” said Sir Hugh frankly. “I’ve been getting steadily colder ever since I came down to this demmed draughty coffee-room.”

Miss Thane, taking Eustacie’s hand, patted it reassuringly, and suggested that they should go back to bed. Eustacie, who felt that at any moment the Beau might return to make a second attempt, at first refused to listen to such a notion, but upon Nye’s saying grimly that she need have no fears for Ludovic’s safety, since he proposed to spend the rest of the night in the coffee-room, she consented to go upstairs with Miss Thane, having first adjured Nye and Sir Hugh on no account to let Ludovic out of their sight until they saw him securely bolted into his bedchamber.

Sir Hugh was quite ready to promise anything, but his rational mind had little expectation of further adventures that night, and as soon as the two women had disappeared round the bend in the staircase, he reached up a long arm, and placing the Beau’s quizzing-glass on the mantelshelf above his head, said: “Well, now that they’ve gone, we can make ourselves comfortable. Go and get the brandy, Nye, and bring a glass for yourself.”

There were no more alarms during the rest of the night, but next morning Nye, and Miss Thane, and Eustacie met in consultation, and agreed that, however distasteful to him it might be, Ludovic must at least during the day be confined to the cellar. Nye, uncomfortably aware that there were no less than three doors into the Red Lion which must of necessity be kept unlocked and any number of windows through which a man might enter unobserved, flatly refused the responsibility of housing Ludovic if he persisted in roaming at large about the inn. The boldness of the attempt made in the night convinced him that the Beau would not easily relinquish his purpose of disposing of Ludovic, and he could not but realize that for such a purpose no place could be more convenient than a public inn. The month being February, there were very few private chaises on the Brighton road, but from time to time one would pass, and very likely pull up at the Red Lion for its occupants to refresh themselves in the coffee-room. In addition to this genteel custom there was a fairly constant, if thin, flow of country people drifting in and out of the taproom, so that it would be quite an easy matter for a stranger to step into the inn while the landlord and Clem were busy with their customers.

As might have been expected, Ludovic, when this decision was made known to him, objected with the utmost violence to his proposed incarceration. Not all Nye’s promises of every arrangement for his comfort being made could reconcile him to the scheme. Comfort, he said roundly, could not exist in a dark cellar smelling of every kind of liquor and crowded with pipes, barrels, spiders, and very likely rats.

Sir Hugh, wandering into the parlour in the middle of this speech, and imperfectly understanding its significance, said that, for his part, he had no objection to the smell of good liquor; in fact, quite liked it, a remark which made Ludovic retort: “You may like the smell of liquor, but how would you like to be shut up in a wine-cellar the whole day long?”

“It depends on the wine,” said Sir Hugh, after giving this question due consideration.

In the end the combined arguments and entreaties of the two ladies prevailed with Ludovic, and he consented to repair to his underground retreat, Eustacie offering to share his imprisonment, and Sir Hugh, appealed to by his sister, promising to visit him for a game of piquet during the afternoon. “Though why you should want to go and sit in the cellar if you don’t like the smell of liquor I can’t make out,” he said.

This unfortunate remark, pounced on immediately by Ludovic to support his own view of the matter, called forth a severe rebuke from Miss Thane. She tried to explain the exigencies of Ludovic’s situation to Sir Hugh, but after listening incredulously to her for a few minutes, he said with a resigned shake of his head that it all sounded like a lot of nonsense to him, and that if any more people came poking and prying into the inn they would have him to deal with.

“Very likely,” said Miss Thane, displaying admirable patience, “but if you did not happen to see Beau Lavenham enter the house he might well kill Ludovic before you knew anything about it.”

“If that fellow calls here today I want a word with him,” said Sir Hugh, his brow darkening. “I’ve a strong notion I’ve caught another demmed cold, thanks to him getting me up out of my bed in the small hours.”

“I may have only one sound arm,” interrupted Ludovic, “but if you think I can’t defend myself, you much mistake the matter, Sally.”

“I am quite sure you can defend yourself, my dear boy, but I want your cousin’s corpse on my hands as little as I want yours.”

Sir Hugh was never at his best in the early morning, nor did a disturbed night, crowned by liberal potations, help to dispel a certain sleepy vagueness that clung to him, but these significant words roused him sufficiently to make him say with decision that he had borne with a great deal of irregularity at the Red Lion, what with Bow Street Runners bobbing in and out the house, people living in cellars, and scoundrels breaking in through the windows, but that his tolerance would on no account extend to corpses littering the premises.

“Mind, Sally!” he said. “The first corpse I find means that we go back to London, wine or no wine!”

“In that case,” said Miss Thane, “Ludovic must certainly go down to the cellar. The man we want now, of course, is Sir Tristram. I wonder if he means to visit us today, or whether we should send for him?”

“Send for him?” repeated Sir Hugh. “Why, he practically lives here!”

Ludovic, descending into the cellar, announced that he proposed to spend the morning making up his loss of sleep, and taking Miss Thane aside, told her to take Eustacie upstairs, and, if possible, for a walk. “It’s not fit for her down here,” he said. “Don’t let her worry about me! She’s a trifle done up by all this romance.”

She laughed, promised to do what she could to keep Eustacie from fretting, and departed to suggest to her that they should presently go for a walk in the direction of Warninglid, in the hopes of encountering Sir Tristram.