Виктория Холт - The Captive

I was looking at him appealingly.

“Do you want my opinion?” he said.

I nodded.

“Please, Lucas.”

“Drop it. Give up this farce. Come back to Trecorn. Marry me and make the best of a bad job.”

“What do you mean, a bad job … ?”

“Say goodbye to Simon Perrivale. Put him out of your thoughts. Look at it like this. He ran away when he was about to be arrested. That is too significant to be ignored. If he returned he’d be tried for murder and hanged. Let him lead a new life in Australia … or wherever he lands up. As you’re so certain of his innocence, give him a chance to start a new life.”

“I want to prove that he was wrongly accused.”

“You want him to come back.” He looked at me sadly.

“I understand absolutely,” he said. He shrugged his shoulders and looked grave, as though communing with himself. Then he said: “What discoveries have you made so far?”

“There was a drunken sailor.”

“Who?”

“His name was Thomas Parry. He fell over a cliff and was drowned.”

“Wait a minute. I remember something about that. There was quite a stir about it at the time. It was some while ago. Didn’t he come down here … from London, I think. Got drunk and fell over the cliff.

It’s coming back to me. “

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s the one. Well, he’s buried in the graveyard here. I discovered Kate putting flowers on his grave. When I asked her why she said he was her father.”

“What! Married to the glorious Mirabel?”

“One can’t be sure with Kate. She romances. She said that she saw him in the market in Upbridge and he was asking if anyone knew a woman named Parry with a little girl. She was frightened and hid herself behind the woman she was with … the mother of a little girl she had gone to play with. She was frightened of him. Apparently she remembered something of a father who was a brute.”

“And he was found at the bottom of the cliff.”

“You see, it seemed so fortuitous. If Mirabel was hoping to marry one of the Perrivales and a husband from the past who is supposed to be dead turns up, it could be awkward.”

“And as far as the glorious Mirabel was concerned, he was more useful at the bottom of the cliff than making trouble for her. It makes sense.”

“Not completely. You see, I have only Kate’s word for it. I asked her if she had told her mother she had seen him. She said no. But she had told Gramps. Gramps is her name for her grandfather. Major Durrell. He said she had made a mistake and she shouldn’t mention it because it would upset her mother and her father anyway was dead. He’d been drowned at sea.”

“Why should the child think it was her father?”

“She’s a strange child … given to fantasy. It occurred to me that she might miss a father and was inventing one.”

“She has Sir Tristan as a stepfather.”

“He doesn’t take much notice of her. She calls him Stepper in a rather contemptuous way … but then she is contemptuous of most of us. It occurred to me that she had seen people putting flowers on graves and thought she would like to do it and so invented a father. The sailor had no relations so she put flowers on his grave and adopted him.”

“It seems plausible … but how is all this going to solve Simon Perrivale’s troubles?”

“I don’t know. But just suppose someone now in the house did the murder … well, people who commit one might not hesitate at another. It might be part of the whole picture.”

He looked at me in some exasperation.

I said: “I knew you’d take it like this. I thought you might help me.”

“I’ll help,” he said.

“But I don’t think it is going to get anywhere.

Simon, it seems, was jealous of the other two. He killed one in a rage, and was caught by the other. That’s it. As for the sailor, I think you may be right. The child wanted a father so she took up with the dead man who had no relations around. “

“She cut the head gardener’s prize roses to put on his grave.”

“There you are. That bears it out.”

“All the same …”

“All the same …” he repeated, smiling at me quizzically.

“If we are going to investigate, we have to pick up the most likely point and there is a faint possibility that something might be lurking behind the untimely death of the sailor. At least that is something we could start with.”

“How?”

“Find out something about him. Who was he? Who was his wife? Then if she should happen to be the present Lady Perrivale it might begin to

look as though we were on to something. And if someone actually got rid of the sailor because he was making a nuisance of himself … well, there is a possibility that that person, having successfully accomplished one crime, might try another.”

“I knew you’d help me, Lucas.”

“So we begin to unravel the skein,” he said dramatically.

“How?”

“Go to London. Look up records. What a pity Dick Duvane isn’t here. He would throw himself into this with enthusiasm.”

“Oh Lucas … I’m so grateful.”

“I’m grateful, too,” he said.

“It relieves the monotony of the days.”

I went back to Perrivale Court in a state of euphoria.

I knew I was right to have taken Lucas into my confidence.

Lucas was away for three weeks. Each day I looked for a message from him. Kate and I had settled into a routine. She still had her difficult moments, but she made no attempts to play truant. We read together, discussed what we read, and I made no reference to the sailor’s grave which she continued to visit. She did not take any more flowers from the garden but contented herself with wild ones.

A few days after Lucas had left for London, Maria, the Dowager Lady Perrivale’s maid, sought me out and said that her mistress would like to have a chat with me.

Maria was one of those servants who, having been in the service of a master or mistress for a long time, feel themselves to be especially privileged. Moreover, they are usually too useful to their employers to be denied what they expect. They look upon themselves as ‘one of the family’, and I could see that, as far as Maria was concerned, this might be to my advantage.

It was the first time I had been in that part of the house which, when I looked from my own window, I could see across the courtyard.

Maria greeted me, putting her finger to her lips.

“She’s fast asleep,” she said.

“That’s just like her. She’ll ask someone to come and see her and when they come she’s dead to the world.”

She beckoned me and opened a door. There, sitting in a big armchair, was Lady Perrivale. Her head had fallen to one side and she was fast asleep.

“We won’t disturb her for a bit. She had a bad night. Gets them sometimes. Having nightmares about that Sir Edward. He was a bit of a tartar. Eee … but you know naught about that. She’s up and down.

Quite her old self sometimes. Then her mind goes wandering. “

“Shall I come back later?”

She shook her head.

“Sit you down here for a bit. When she wakes she’ll ring or bang her stick. Oh dear me, she’s not what she was.”

“I suppose that happens to us all in time.”

“Reckon. But she went down when Sir Edward passed away.”

“Well, I suppose they’d been married for a long time.”

She nodded.

“I was with her when she came south. Sorry to leave Yorkshire, I was. Ever been, Miss Cranleigh?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“The dales have to be seen to be believed … and the moors.

“Tis a gradeley place, Yorkshire.”

“I am sure it is.”

“Here? Well … I don’t know. I could never get used to these folks.