Виктория Холт - The Captive

I must learn something about Cosmo, who had been engaged to marry the fascinating Mirabel who had become a definite personality to me. I was getting my cast together. Simon, I knew well; I had glimpsed Tristan.

How enamoured had Simon been of Mirabel? Having seen her I could imagine how attractive she would be to most men.

I must have dozed, for I was awakened suddenly by a sound outside my door. I opened my eyes and saw the door handle slowly turning. The door was silently pushed open and a figure glided into the room. It was covered with a sheet and I knew at once who was under that sheet.

She stood by the door and said in a sibilant whisper: “Go away. Go away … while there is still time. No good can come to you here.”

I pretended to sleep on. She came closer to the bed. My eyes were half closed and when she came near enough, I caught the sheet and pulled it off.

“Hello, ghost,” I said.

She looked deflated.

“It was a poor impersonation,” I added.

“And a sheet… obviously a sheet. Couldn’t you have done better than that?”

“You were pretending to be asleep. It wasn’t fair.”

“You were pretending to be a ghost and all’s fair in love and war, and war is what this is, isn’t it… since it certainly isn’t love.”

“You were scared.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Just for a minute?” she said almost pleadingly.

“Not for a second. You could have done better than that.

In the first place, if you planned to stage a haunting, it wasn’t very clever to talk so much about ghosts when we first met. You see, you put me on my guard. I said, “This girl fancies herself as a governess-baiter.”

“A what!” she cried.

“You see, you have such a limited vocabulary. I’m not surprised, as you won’t learn. You like taunting governesses because in comparison with them you feel ignorant. You think that for a moment they are in a weak position and you are in a strong one. That’s rather cowardly, of course, but people who are unsure of themselves do things like that.”

“I frightened Miss Evans.”

“I’ve no doubt you did. You don’t care about other people at all, do you?”

She looked surprised.

“Didn’t it occur to you that Miss Evans was trying to earn her living and the only reason she would want to teach an unpleasant child like you was because she had to.”

“Am I unpleasant?”

“Very. But if you gave a little thought to others besides yourself, you might be less so.”

“I don’t like you.”

“I don’t greatly care for you.”

“So you will go away, will you?”

“Probably. You don’t think anyone would want to stay to teach you, do you?”

“Why not?”

“Because you have stated so clearly that you do not want to learn.”

“What of that?”

“It shows you have no respect for learning and only stupid people feel like that.”

“So I am stupid?”

“It would seem so. Of course, you could change. I tell you what. Why don’t we make a truce?”

“What’s a truce?”

“It’s a sort of agreement. You make terms.”

“What terms?”

“We could see if you like the way I teach and if you are prepared to learn. If you don’t, I’ll go and you can have another governess. It will save you racking your brains for methods to make me uncomfortable. Let’s go about it in a civilized way without all these childish tricks to make me go.”

“All right,” she said.

“Let’s have a truce.”

“Then go back to bed now. Good night.”

She paused at the door.

“There are ghosts in the house, though,” she said.

“There was a murder here … not long ago.”

“Not in this house,” I said.

“No, but it was Stepper’s brother. One was killed and the other ran away. They were all in love with my mother before she married Stepper.”

She was very observant. She had noticed the change in me. She came back and sat on the bed.

“What do you know about it?” I asked.

“You weren’t in the house at the time.”

“No, I came here when my mother married Stepper. Before that we were at Gramps’s house.”

“Whose?”

“My grandfather’s. He’s in the Dower House now. He went there when my mother got married. He had to have a better house then because he was the father of the lady of the manor. Gramps didn’t like living in a little cottage anyway. He’s really a very grand gentleman. He’s Major Durrell and majors are very important. They win battles. We used to live in London but that was years and years ago. Then we came here and everything changed.”

“You must have known them all … the one who was killed and the one who went away.”

“I knew them … in a way. They were all in love with my mother. Gramps used to laugh about it. He was ever so pleased, because when she married Stepper we moved out of the cottage. But first there was all that fuss. And then Cosmo was killed and Simon ran away because he didn’t want to be hanged. “

I was silent and she went on: “They do hang them, you know. They put a rope round their necks and they … swing. It hurts a lot … but then they’re dead. That was what he was afraid of. Well, who wouldn’t be?”

I could not speak. I kept seeing Simon stealthily leaving the house . making his way to Tilbury . meeting the sailor, John Player.

She was watching me closely.

“Ghosts come back when people are murdered. They haunt people.

Sometimes they want to know what really happened. “

“Do you think something happened … which people don’t know about?”

She looked at me slyly. I was unsure of her. She could be teasing me.

I had betrayed my interest and she had noticed. She would already have guessed that I was extraordinarily interested in the murder.

“I was there, wasn’t I?” she said.

“I remember. I was with Gramps .. my mother was upstairs. Someone one of the grooms from Perrivale came to the door and said:

“Mr. Cosmo’s been found shot. He’s dead.” Gramps said:

“Oh my God.” You’re not supposed to say Oh my God. It’s taking the Lord’s name in vain. It says something in the Bible about it. And Gramps went upstairs to my mother and he wouldn’t let me go up with him. “

I tried to think of something appropriate to say but nothing came.

“Do you ride. Cranny?” she asked, seemingly irrelevantly.

I nodded.

“I tell you what. I’ll take you to Bindon Boys … the scene of the crime. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I said: “You’re obsessed by the crime. It’s all over now. Perhaps one day we’ll ride out to that place.”

“All right,” she said.

“It’s a pact.”

“And now,” I said, ‘good night. “

She gave me a grin and, picking up the sheet, left me.

I lay for a long time, wide awake. I had come to teach Kate, but there might be a good deal she could teach me.

Kate had long decided that the lives of governesses should be made so uncomfortable that they found it impossible to stay, so they left, which gave her a period of freedom before the next one came, and she had to start her eliminating tactics once more.

I was different from the others, mainly because she sensed that it was not imperative for me to keep the job as a means of livelihood. That took a little of the spice out of the baiting and gave me the advantage. I tried to tell myself that all children had a streak of cruelty in them because they lack experience of life and therefore an ability to imagine the extent of the suffering they cause.

Apart from the fact that I was becoming sure that she could be of use to me in my quest, I wanted to take up the case of other governesses who had suffered before me and in particular those who would suffer after me. I wanted to teach Kate a little humanity. Oddly enough, I did not despair of her. I believed something must have happened to make her the callous little creature she had become; and I had a feeling that it must be possible to change her.