The Camelot Caper (22 page)

The muzzle of the gun dropped, deliberately, a few inches.

“I've never shot anyone in the kneecap,” said Freddie. “But I've heard that it's the most painful of all wounds. I'll start with your right knee. On the count of four. One…”

“Oh, God,” said Cousin John devoutly.

“Two…”

Jess propped David's limp body up against the cot; he had slid silently out of consciousness some time before, and she was glad he was no longer with them; he'd have tried to fight, and gotten himself efficiently killed. Surreptitiously she flexed her hands. She didn't need to have the rest of Freddie's program outlined to her. Once he had extracted the information he wanted from John, he would shoot them all. On the whole, she preferred to be killed in action. Coldly and without malice she waited for the first shot, planning under cover of its effect to do something. She didn't know what. Just something.

“Three…”

“Freddie, stop and think…”

“F—”

“All right, I'll tell you.” Her cousin mopped his brow with his shirt sleeve; he was, appar
ently, afraid to reach for a handkerchief, and Jess didn't blame him. “You are so damned hot-headed,” he complained.

“Where is it?”

“In my room. In a shoebox under the bed.”

“Why, you complete fool, I'd have found that at once.”

“I know. But
you
didn't know till now, did you?”

Freddie's dark face congealed into something that might have stepped off the towers of Notre Dame, rainspout and all. For a second Jess thought that sheer exasperation would tighten his trigger finger. But greed triumphed over rage.

“I'll have a look,” he said. “If it's not there…”

He reached backward for the door handle, not taking his eyes or his aim off the huddled trio. Jess was suddenly wet with perspiration, produced by a fear which she had not had time to enjoy when death seemed imminent. She understood now why men sold out their allies and friends for five minutes more of life. Looking up at her cousin's poised, immobile shape, she could not make out from his expression whether he had told the truth. She didn't know whether she hoped he had or not.

Freddie pulled the door open and the loud
screech of rusty hinges reverberated. Then Jess echoed the scream. Her eyes were focused, in a stare that showed the whites, on the thing that stood in the open doorway.

Freddie produced a stretched grimace; he was incapable of a genuine smile.

“The oldest trick of them all,” he said. “Want me to look round, do you?”

“Well, no,” Jess said truthfully.

There was some excuse for her scream; the figure posed eerily in the doorway might have stepped bodily out of a horror film. Its face showed white, disembodied, between the masses of dark hair and the sombre black garment; its features were hideously shadowed by the flickering light of the candle it held in one pale hand. In the other hand, it held a hammer.

As the pair stared, mesmerized, Freddie's smirk faded; their collective surprise was too genuine to be ignored. He started to turn, but he was too late; the shrouded figure lifted the hammer and brought it neatly down on his head with a distinct
bonk!
Freddie fell down.

“This,” said Aunt Guinevere fastidiously, “has gone far enough.”

 

“I had to let him escape,” said Cousin John. He added placatingly, “Do have more sherry.”

It was the afternoon of the following day. Bright sunlight poured through the windows of the parlor and Jess wanted to pass her hands through it as if it were water. She would never, ever again, get too much light.

The party assembled over the decanter and glasses looked more like negotiators of an uneasy truce than friends. To be sure, neither mother nor son showed any signs of strain; Aunt Guinevere was as silent as a sphinx, her lips tightly folded, her hands ladylike in her lap, and Cousin John, in a costume of impeccable sartorial perfection, had not a shadow under his blue eyes.

David was shaved and dressed in his best, but he was so swathed in bandages that he looked like an escape from an operating room. Not even a black silk sling and a bandaged brow could make him look romantic, for the nose triumphed over all. Jess, in her scarlet sweater and plaid skirt, looked a lot brighter than she felt. She could sense the bags under her eyes hanging down on her cheeks, and was aware of a nervous tendency to scream whenever anyone moved.

“I can't believe it's over,” she said grumpily. “It's too easy. Too facile.”

“That's Cousin John for you.” David was disagreeable. “Facile is his middle name.”

“Oh, but look here,” John said affably. “It is simple; why make it difficult? If we'd had Freddie arrested, he might have said many nasty things about me. I'd have denied them, naturally, but some suspicion might have lingered. This way we blame all the unpleasantness on Fred and remove any cause for revenge that he might harbor. They wouldn't have put him in prison for long, you know—he didn't actually kill anyone—and guess where he'd have gone first when they let him out!”

He produced a realistic shudder, but Jess saw an unregenerate twinkle in the eye he turned toward her.

“You've a point,” David admitted grudgingly. “But that tale you told about the treasure—”

“That Grandfather kept it hidden from us all these years and Freddie found it in the spare room when he came weekending? Weak, I'll admit; but life generally does produce improbable plots.”

“In any case, the story has been accepted,” said Aunt Guinevere calmly. “I see no reason to cause further unpleasantness.”

David studied her with unconcealed exasperation.

“By rights, that precious son of yours ought to be sent up for a few years.”

“It would be a very poor return for rescuing you,” said Aunt Guinevere.

“And how embarrassing to have a near kin in the jug,” added Cousin John. “‘My wife's cousin? Oh, yes, old man, he's the one at Wormwood Scrubs. We send him little parcels now and then, soap, you know, and shaving lotion….'”

His mother gave him a look of fond pride.

“John, darling, you mustn't joke. It was naughty of you.”

David having been rendered speechless by this comment, Jess returned to the attack.

“The treasure will have to go back to Mr. Pendennis, you know.”

“I gathered you felt that way. Jess, wouldn't you like to have a look at it first?”

She knew his real motive when he spread it out before her. Battered and worn by time as it was, it took the breath away—massive armlets of gold and uncut stones, a necklace of twisted granulated goldwork that had a faintly oriental look; most evocative of all, a flattened gold circlet that was too large to have encircled an arm or neck.

“It's a crown, you know,” John said softly. “It may have been
the
crown.” He added, “That's how I'd have advertised it, at any rate.”

“The crown of King Arthur?” Jess meant to scoff; it wasn't her fault that the words sounded a little breathless.

“He wasn't even a king,” David said. “Just a British war lord. A local mercenary.”

“Tell that to the tourists,” John said. He glanced at Jess, and recognized the painful truth; her fascination was for the objects, not for what they might bring. “Ah, well, it was worth trying…. Off they go, to Pendennis and the dear old British Museum. Unless you think a small souvenir apiece…No? In that case…”

“Yes, it's time we left,” David said.

“This time you really are off for Sussex to introduce Jess to your parents?”

“Unless some other group of thugs interferes.”

“No one asked you to come back last time,” said Cousin John petulantly. “Think of all the fuss we'd have avoided if you hadn't. Not that it wasn't frightfully clever of you, but still…”

“Your problem is over-elaboration,” David said. “If you hadn't harassed Jess, you'd probably have made out all right.”

“I suppose you're right; Grandfather most probably wouldn't have said anything to her. But I couldn't be certain. And if I'd pinched the ring after it got here, it would have looked so
suspicious. And she'd have been sure to ask why he had to have it back. And then, you see, it all looked so simple….”

“You almost killed me, that's all,” said Jess. “Simple, he says.”

“But without me you'd never have met David, and settled down amongst us all. You must be our guests when we open the hotel. On your honeymoon, perhaps.”

“Hotel?”

“Certainly. There'll be a sensation when this discovery is made public. Pendennis won't cash in on it, so why shouldn't we? We'll erect a few ruins out in the pasture; Camelot was a largish place, I imagine, so we'll simply claim it lapped over onto our land. The hotel will be very picturesque—blackened beams in the ceiling, stone fireplaces, and all that—the Americans adore it. I'm thinking of calling it ‘The Camelot Arms.' Or did I tell you that?”

“How are you going to get the money to renovate the place?” Jess demanded.

Her cousin smiled at her.

“Oh, I'll find it,” he said gently. “Don't worry about that.”

“Let's go,” David said hastily. “Before he tells us.”

Aunt Guinevere gave them only a cool nod in
farewell, but John escorted them to the door, chattering cheerfully. As they came out into the sunlight he asked, “How are you going to manage driving with that arm?”

“I'm driving,” Jess said, pulling out her gloves with an air. “And never mind the raised eyebrows, John. I can't do any more damage to his precious car than the pair of you have managed to do already.”

“That's love,” murmured Cousin John. He added thoughtfully, “Perhaps ‘The Excalibur Arms' would be more effective.”

“That's a little farfetched, surely.”

“Not at all. Don't tell me you missed that point?” He turned and touched the door-knocker. “The family crest. The same symbol that's cut onto the ring. That gave me something of a shock the first time I saw it. I think Grand-papa must have scratched it on himself, just to add verisimilitude, et cetera. But…it would be odd, wouldn't it, if that crest had been there since the fifth century?”

David stirred restlessly.

“I don't follow you. The family crest is a sword. But why should the sword, any old sword, be Excalibur?”

“Don't be dense. Look at the crest here, above the door; it's carved in stone, isn't it? Just as the
emblem on the ring is cut into an agate. Wait, though…” John pondered, his eyebrows drawn together. “You're right, it wasn't Excalibur, that came later. By George, that's it! That's the perfect name!”

Jess fought the urge, but she couldn't help herself; she had played straight man to her cousin too many times.

“What?” she asked.

John's smile was seraphic.

“‘The Sword on the Stone,' of course.”