Sweet Sanctuary (18 page)

For a while pain made her deaf and blind. Then, as the violent waves of agony subsided, becoming merely a steady throb, she began to hear again; a scuffling, voices, then a queer thud.

She pulled herself slowly up, clutching her head as a stab of pain shot through the back of her eyes. It was very hard to move, but she must make the effort. Slowly she prised her lids apart.

A figure Hocked the kitchen doorway, looming like a tower against the light. Kate blinked, trying to focus.

It was Nick! He was beside her in a second, lifting her by her shoulders, his fingers moving over her absently as he spoke.

"What the hell did he do to you? Kate, are you all right?"

She had to speak, but it was an effort which hurt. "Burglar…" The word scratched out weakly. Her lips seemed numb with the barbed pain which was consuming her.

Nick shrugged her warning aside. "I've dealt with him—tied him up with washing line."

She giggled weakly, finding that funny for some reason, Her eyes were getting used to the light.

He gently turned her face towards him and swore ferociously under his breath. "My God, your head… it's bleeding!"

"I'm only bruised," she assured him.

"Come into the kitchen. I'll take a look," Nick sounded brusque and icily angry.

"Police," she mumbled.

He nodded. "Yes. I'll go and ring them. Hang on here…" He left her. She leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes again with relief. It was wonderful to be back in darkness again.

Nick returned too soon. He gently guided her into the kitchen. Their intruder lay on the floor, neatly trussed hand and foot like a chicken. Kate stepped past him gingerly and he glared up at her.

"The police will be here in a few minutes," Nick told him cheerfully.

There was no answer. Nick made Kate sit down and brought a bowl of water over to the table. He tilted her chin, and she kept her eyes closed while he tenderly sponged her head.

"You're going to have a very nasty bump there," he told her. "It was bleeding, but it's not serious, just a graze. It's swelling already. Soon it will be all the colours of the rainbow."

When he had removed the water and dried her head, he glanced down at the burglar.

"I wish I'd hit you a damned sight harder! If you were not tied up I'd give you a good thrashing, you cowardly scoundrel! Anyone who can do this to a young girl…" Nicholas's voice broke off in frustrated fury and he glared impotently at the other man.

The police arrived shortly afterwards. They removed the burglar, took a statement from Nick and Kate and asked them both to come down to the police station later that morning.

The sergeant, a short burly man with a moustache, looked at Kate's bruised head, and advised Nick to call a doctor.

"She could have slight concussion. Head injuries are dodgy things. Best not to take any chances."

Nick nodded. "I'll do that,"

The sergeant took away the bag of valuable objects which the man had been attempting to steal. "We need these for a while, I'm afraid—evidence, you know. You'll get them back in due time. We'll give you a receipt for them now. Could you make out an inventory?"

Nick looked through the objects and quickly scribbled out a list. The sergeant checked the list against the items in the bag, and signed it.

He left a few moments later, congratulating them both on their achievement.

Nick looked at Kate with a rueful grin. "It's you we have to thank. I only just heard you screaming my name. I didn't hear the burglar at all. If it hadn't been for you we would have lost all that stuff."

"I heard him moving about," she explained.

"I seem to be piling up an enormous debt to you," he said. "How shall I ever repay you?"

Kate looked down at her fingers, twisting them into a knot. She could not think of anything to say to him. Huskily, she stammered, "Nonsense… anyone would have done the same…" Then, with a flushed face and feverish eyes, "I don't want your gratitude!"

He put a slim hand over her contorting fingers and gently straightened them. "What do you want, Kate?" His tone was strangely tense.

She swallowed, her pulses drumming, and did not answer him. After a moment of taut silence he stood up and moved away from her. "I'd better ring the doctor."

"No," she said in quick protest. "Not in the middle of the night! I'll see him in the morning when he comes to see Aunt Elaine. I'm certain I haven't got concussion."

Nick hesitated, then agreed. They put out the lights and went back up to their beds in silence.

Next morning Kate was washing up when suddenly remembered that the burglar had been studying the umbrella stand when she switched on the light last night.

He had seemed interested in it when he last came. Could it possibly be more valuable than Aunt Elaine imagined?

She mentioned it to her when she took her some hot milk later that morning, but Aunt Elaine laughed and shook her head. "Why, of course that thing isn't valuable! How could it be? Victorian mass-produced at its ugliest?"

"I like it," said Kate.

Aunt Elaine looked at her with tender amusement. "Well, if it's going to worry you, by all means call in an expert. Try the phone book—look up Pan's Cellar, an antique shop on the road to Maiden. The owner is a retired don, knows a lot about these things. He can come out and give us an estimate of the value."

Kate rang the shop before Aunt Elaine could change her mind, and the owner, his voice coolly interested by the name of the house, promised to call that afternoon.

The doctor was late that day. His arrival coincided with that of the antique dealer, so Kate asked the doctor to find his own way upstairs, and took the dealer down the hall to look at the umbrella stand.

She explained the circumstances of the burglary of the previous evening, and the man listened thoughtfully while he examined the stand from all angles. He seemed particularly interested in the base and the interior!

"Could I take this into some lighter room?" He stood up, holding it carefully.

Kate showed him into the drawing-room. He gave a curious look at the contents of the room, then concentrated on the umbrella stand for a long while.

Kate watched him eagerly. At last he seemed satisfied, and looked up at her, slipping his magnifying glass into his waistcoat pocket.

He was a thin, tall man with thin greying hair which strayed down over a bony forehead. His pale blue eyes were intelligent but cold. The fine nose and mouth gave him a poetic delicacy of expression, but Kate was not sure she liked him.

"You're an observant young lady," he told her. "Know anything about antiques?"

She shook her head. "I'm afraid not."

"Then you've been very lucky. This is sixteenth-century Chinese and quite valuable." His voice was still unruffled, quite cool. He showed no signs of excitement.

"Mrs. Butler thought it might be Victorian," Kate volunteered in delight. It was wonderful to have been proved right.

"There were many Victorian imitations—earlier than that, too. Our own manufacturers copied the Chinese stuff which we had imported earlier. They were very fashionable during the eighteenth century. But this one…" he touched the long vase with a careful finger, "this is the genuine article."

"It's a miracle it survived," Kate breathed.

"It undoubtedly is," he agreed, "after being used as an umbrella stand! Now, what is Mrs. Butler going to do with it? Sell it? I could handle that for her. I think I have a buyer—American, very wealthy. She would
get
a fair price."

Kate smiled at him. "I'll have to consult her first. I don't think she's really considered the possibility of the vase being valuable."

When she went upstairs she found the doctor still talking to Mrs. Butler, discussing the weather and the agricultural prospects for the coming summer. The early spring, he felt, might prove a calamity later.

Aunt Elaine at once asked him to inspect Kate's bump, which he did gently, assuring them after a moment that it was not serious.

"Painful, though, eh?" He touched Kate's cheek with one finger. "Brave girl! I'm afraid I can do nothing for you. The bump will go down in time. For the present take aspirins if your head aches, but not too many. They only lead to tummy trouble later."

When the doctor had gone Kate told Aunt Elaine the good news about the umbrella stand. Her excitement blazed as she spoke, and the other woman smiled as she listened.

"Nick must be consulted about this, of course. It's his vase, after all."

"Of course!" Kate flushed. "I'd forgotten that!"

She went back downstairs and told the antique dealer that the owner would be in touch with him if his services were further required. They had agreed to pay him a fee for his evaluation of the Chinese vase, but he now said that he would waive it for the time being.

"I will take it out of my commission if you permit me to sell the vase," he told Kate.

Nick arrived home half an hour later, to drive Kate to the police station to make a further statement. When she excitedly burst out with the news about the umbrella stand, Nick was bewildered for a few moments.

"What Chinese vase? Umbrella stand… do you mean the one in the hall, that old Victorian pot thing?"

"It's sixteenth-century Chinese," Kate assured him with a glowing face. "I suspected that the burglar was very interested in it, so Aunt Elaine let me bring an antique dealer here to check it. He wants to sell it to an American, Nick. He says it's very valuable."

Nick stared at her in astonishment. "Does he, indeed? You have been busy, haven't you, Kate? Nursing Aunt Elaine, saving us from burglars, looking after the animals. And now this! Busy, busy Kate!"

She flushed a bright, burning red and looked away, terrified that the tears would spring to her eyes and betray her. His tone had stung, sardonic and mocking as it had been, and she wondered angrily why he should taunt her in this half-malicious fashion. What had she done to make him look at her in that strange way, his eyes derisive, his mouth curling in a sharp smile.

"Well, I shall have to find somewhere else to be busy soon, shan't I?" She forced herself to reply in a light tone, pinning a false, bright smile to her face. "I mean to start looking for a new job tomorrow. Aunt Elaine no longer needs me. I've done all I can for her."

"For us all," Nick drawled in the same odd voice. "So you're moving on, Kate? We shall miss you." He did not sound as if he meant a word of it.

They drove to the police station, leaving Mrs. Pepper to guard the house and Aunt Elaine, and were ushered into a waiting-room. When they had read the posters on the walls, skimmed through some dogeared magazines and fidgeted on their chairs for about twenty minutes, they were taken off to separate interview rooms to make their statements. They left some hours later, weary and fed up.

"Bureaucracy!" Nick spat the word out angrily as he headed for Sanctuary. "The world won't end with a bang—it will just suffocate beneath its own weight in official forms! Everything in triplicate! The same questions over and over again!"

"They were very polite and helpful," Kate said faintly. "They brought me two cups of tea, and biscuits."