Death in the Castle (4 page)

“Just Kate.” She drew back and then stepped ahead of him. “This way, please, Mr. Blayne. They are waiting for you in the great hall.”

She went ahead of him through passages so narrow that there was no possibility of their walking side by side until she came to the small door which led into the great hall. There she was delayed for a moment because the latch was rusty and would not turn. He caught up with her.

“Please—”

She refused to yield. “You don’t know the latch as well as I do. It’ll give in a minute.”

He waited for the minute and then took her by the shoulders and set her firmly aside. She caught her breath in surprise and said nothing. Let him! He wouldn’t be able to move the latch, but he’d have to find out for himself, cocksure as he was. To her chagrin the willful latch yielded at once and the door swung open. Inside the hall the four young men, who had long since given up their search, were sitting in the carved oaken chairs. At sight of him they made cries more of welcome than surprise.

“Here’s John Preston Blayne at last!”

“And we thought you were lost!”

Kate broke across their exclamations. “I don’t think you’ve been looking for him at all.”

The youngest one grinned clean across his face. “We didn’t need to, did we? He always turns up, and in the best of company.”

John Blayne laughed.

“We’ve brought the blueprints and are ready to get to work, John, just as soon as you say the word.” To prove it, the young man unrolled a set of papers he had been holding and spread them out flat on the table.

“Work!” Kate exclaimed. “Whatever do they mean?” Startled, she looked from the sheets of blue paper to Mr. Blayne, then to each of the four young men in turn, all of them looking so out of place in the great hall of the castle.

“Lay off, fellows,” John Blayne said good-naturedly. “I don’t blame Miss Wells for being shocked. You’re premature. Things aren’t settled yet, not by a long shot. Fold up your tents now and steal away until tomorrow. You have rooms at the village inn.”

Levity was blown away like mist before a gale. In spite of his casual air, John Blayne’s voice held authority. The young men looked at one another. The eldest coughed and cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact, John, it’s lucky you turned up at this moment. I’m glad nothing is settled. The job is impossible.”

John Blayne looked from one of his men to another and Kate saw his face harden. Tough, was he? Or just used to getting his own way?

“Impossible?” he said quietly. “I don’t recognize the word.”

“The beams are too weak,” one young man urged.

Kate burst into the argument. “Weak, are they? You’d be weak, if you’d been put up a thousand years ago. Weak! They’re as solid as the Bank of England.”

John Blayne threw her a look, amused again and gay. “Thank you, Miss Wells. And you, fellows—I know the castle isn’t Buckingham or Windsor, it’s too old. That’s the beauty of it, and that’s why we must take it down, stone by stone—”

They went into chorus again. “Part of it is brick”—“Those bricks will crumble to dust”—“We’re lucky if we can transport half of them.”

He cut them short. “You underestimate English workmanship!”

The argument grew hot. The nameless young men—and Kate was sure they were nameless because they looked so much alike, with their short noses and strong chins and similar haircuts—rushed into the deepening fray.

“You’ve done a lot of crazy things, John, but this is the craziest.”

“Remember that Japanese temple you bought and took to New York? Still lying in the warehouse—even the Met wouldn’t have it—nobody dares to tackle putting it together again. Why don’t you use that for a museum?”

“And that painting you said had to be restored—”

John Blayne stood rock firm, smiling, enjoying the onslaught, waiting until they were out of breath.

“Now,” he said. “Have you got everything off your chests? Yes, I’m crazy—but I get what I want in the end, remember that! Why don’t I put up the Japanese temple? Some day, at the right time in the right place, I will, and I’ll dare you chaps to tackle the job and you’ll take the dare. I don’t want a temple for a museum, the ghosts of Buddhist monks meditating among fat Rubens women and Roman gods and goddesses! A castle is exactly what I want and exactly what I’ll have. And I was right about the painting, wasn’t I? Under that hodgepodge of oils there was a Raphael. I could smell it. I shall hang it right there, above the chimney piece.”

Grim silence fell. The eldest young man sighed and took a notebook and pencil from his pocket “All right, but it will cost a small fortune—every brick to be wrapped in tissue paper—”

“Remind me to order a hundred tons of tissue paper.”

“And ships to transport the bricks and stone—”

“Remind me to order ten ships instead of the two we have.”

The young man turned to his fellows and shrugged, his eyebrows arched in dismay.

“All right, men, let’s take his dare and tear down the castle!”

Kate could bear no more. She stood listening to the arguments in progressive horror. She looked now at the blueprints outspread upon the table and saw the castle standing not on this green English hill, but in a rugged landscape somewhere far away, and surrounded not by English meadows and by calm brooks, but by wooded mountains and a rocky seacoast. Comprehension flashed upon her mind.

“You’re not—you’re not going to take the castle to America? But that’s insane, Mr. Blayne! It can’t be done, besides Sir Richard won’t allow it. I’m sure he thought the museum was to be here! Wait—I’ll fetch him and Lady Mary. No—no—they’ll never be able to bear the shock. Oh, how to tell them …”

She hesitated and wrung her hands. The door behind her opened. Wells looked in and turned to announce what he saw.

“The gentleman’s been found. Sir Richard, and my lady!”

They were there before she could speak, the two of them coming in together, bravely smiling. Sir Richard put out his hand.

“How do you do, Mr. Blayne? You gave us quite a start, not knowing who you were exactly nor where you’d gone. It’s shockingly easy to be lost in the grounds hereabout. I’m sorry—do forgive us!”

John Blayne accepted the hearty handshake and controlled his instinctive wince. What a grip these old Englishmen had! “My fault entirely, Sir Richard. I shouldn’t have been so unceremonious in my arrival.”

He turned to Lady Mary. “My apologies to you, too, Lady Mary.”

She was pink with effort, Kate observed. Ah, the sweet darling, trying so hard not to mind! Kate glanced at Mr. Blayne, then looked quickly away. She would not help him one bit in his predicament. Let him struggle his way through the mess he’d made, not telling the truth to poor Sir Richard, who’d never have consented had he known—but Lady Mary was talking in her high fluting voice, her public voice, with which she opened bazaars and spoke at charity teas.

“Mr. Blade—”

“Blayne, my dear,” Sir Richard put in.

“Ah yes—I’m sorry—American names are so difficult! I do assure you, now that we’re used to the idea, we’re almost quite reconciled, you know—it’s a rather lovely idea to think of treasures of art hanging on our old walls—I daresay from our little nook in the gatehouse we’ll come here often, as tourists, you know, and all that—Shan’t we, Kate?”

She turned to Kate, but that stubborn young woman, her eyes brimming with tears, merely nodded. Lady Mary, seeing the tears, stared at her in amazement.

“Kate, whatever’s wrong with you? Look, Richard, Kate’s crying!”

“I’m not crying,” Kate said passionately. “It’s just that I’m trying not to—to—to—sneeze.”

She turned her back and made a fine mock sneeze.

Lady Mary appealed prettily to John Blayne. “Oh dear, these old castles are damp, you know, Mr. Blayne. I hope you’ll be prepared. I hope you aren’t thinking of central heating and all that—bad for paintings, I’m sure. We’ve never considered it for ourselves, in spite of being quite miserably cold sometimes, especially if it’s a gray winter without proper sun.”

“You are very kind, Lady Mary,” he said gently. He glanced at Kate’s back.

“So surprising for an American,” Sir Richard was saying, “this love of the past and your wanting an old castle—”

John Blayne glanced about the hall. He was facing his predicament alone. The four young men had taken his suggestion and removed themselves and the blueprints to the village inn. Kate stood at a window, her back obdurate. He rushed into hasty speech.

“Surprising, perhaps, Sir Richard, but I inherit my love of art from my mother. She loved old paintings and my father bought them for her—as an indulgence, I’m afraid. He hasn’t the same taste. As it is, they’ve turned out to be his best investment now. I say now, because when my mother began collecting pictures before she died, about fifteen years ago, and it was apparent that I was to be the only child—which has nothing to do with anything, exactly, except that she wanted something to take up her mind when I was sent to Groton—my father thought it was an absurd obsession. But she went ahead and became really a connoisseur of twelfth- and thirteenth-century art which she afterwards extended to include as late as the seventeenth, particularly English.”

“Interesting,” said Sir Richard.

“My father adored her, and let her have her way. But when she died and her estate was assessed he was amazed—not to say floored—when our lawyers told him the collection was a very fine one, worth something over a hundred million dollars, and likely to triple that amount in his lifetime. He decided immediately that he would build a vaultlike sort of place in which to store the collection, a sort of private Fort Knox.”

“Very interesting,” said Sir Richard.

“But that seemed to me to be nothing short of a crime, because paintings are meant to be seen, you know, and so I protested. I must confess I could never have won against my father, if our lawyers had not had the bright idea of a Foundation.”

“But, surely,” Lady Mary observed, “the building would have had a foundation in any case.”

John Blayne stared, then smiled. “No, no, Lady Mary—a ‘foundation’ in America means a fund set aside for a non-profit purpose, a public service of some sort. As our lawyers have pointed out to my father, if he builds a museum which would be open to the public, he will be able to finance it from this Foundation, which would be tax-deductible.”

Lady Mary turned to Sir Richard. “Do you understand what he’s saying?”

“Not yet, my dear,” Sir Richard replied. “But I daresay I shall, in time.”

“Do stay for luncheon with us so we can go on talking, Mr. …” Lady Mary paused.

“Blayne,” Sir Richard supplied.

“I’d be delighted,” John Blayne said, smiling down at the pair of them. “I wonder if you know how perfect you are in this setting—it’s a way you English have, I think, of looking as though you’ve built your backgrounds to suit.”

“They’ve built us, I fear,” Sir Richard said, returning the smile but dimly.

Kate could bear no more. She turned on them in a fury. “Lady Mary, my dear, and Sir Richard, I assure you, neither of you has the faintest idea—I hadn’t myself until—”

John Blayne threw her a desperate glance. “Miss Wells, please, I beg you. We have a lot to talk about of course, and I—”

“You’re very right,” Kate said hotly, “but it had better be said now. Sir Richard, I think you should know you and my lady—”

John Blayne was suddenly as angry as she. “Really, Miss Wells, this is entirely between Sir Richard and me. I don’t see why you—Sir Richard, there has been a misunderstanding, which certainly can be set straight. On second thought, I’m not sure it is even a misunderstanding—perhaps only on the part of Miss Wells. Of course, she has not seen our correspondence.”

“They’d have told me,” Kate put in.

“Kate dear,” Lady Mary said, wondering. “I can’t think why you keep interrupting Mr. Blade.”

“Blayne, my dear,” Sir Richard said, but was ignored.

“It’s he who is interrupting me, my lady,” Kate said with passion.

“I think,” Sir Richard suggested judiciously, “that we’d better let them have turns, my dear. Shall we say ladies first, Mr. Blayne? Or Kate, shall we give him the courtesy as our guest?”

They faced one another, John Blayne and Kate, neither willing to yield, both knowing that yielding there must be.

“Come, come,” Sir Richard said gently.

John Blayne shrugged his shoulders. “I yield. Sir Richard—as an American, I’m trained to chivalry. Ladies first.”

Sir Richard laughed. He was enjoying the contest. “Very nicely put, I must say! Did you hear that, my dear? Trained to chivalry he says—very nice, for an American, eh?”

Lady Mary met smile with smile. “He’s much better than expected.”

“Thank you,” John Blayne said. “And now, if I may confess it, I’m delighted to accept your invitation to luncheon, Lady Mary.”

She inclined her head and nodded to Wells. “Lay another place, Wells, and use the silver soup tureen.” She glanced at the waiting men. “And in the small dining hall, just the three of us.”

“Very good, my lady.” Wells disappeared.

Through all this, Kate had waited in stiff patience. Lady Mary, it seemed, had forgotten the controversy and perhaps Sir Richard wanted it forgotten. Well, she insisted upon it. She turned to face them and spoke with firmness. “Mr. Blayne, pray proceed.”

He answered with a sort of desperate gaiety.

“You have the floor, I believe, Miss Wells. No? Very well, then. Sir Richard, she’s right—I’m planning a great piece of folly—quite terrible, in fact. I do plan to take it away.”

Kate ignored the gaiety. “Sir Richard, it’s the castle he’s taking away.”

Silence fell. Lady Mary broke it faintly, “Did you say
away,
Kate?”

“To America, my lady.”

“To America?” Lady Mary echoed in a whisper. Then the monstrous meaning crept into her understanding. “Richard—he’s taking the castle to America!”

Sir Richard went white, then the red came flashing up from his neck. He was suddenly half blind with pain stabbing at his temples. “Mr. Blayne, I don’t understand.”

“I can’t blame you, Sir Richard,” John Blayne said gently. “It’s my fault. We should have had our lawyers handle the transaction—I’m always too informal—too impetuous—but I thought my letter would explain everything—would be enough …”