The Camelot Caper (9 page)

“Ah.” David swallowed half a piece of toast and pointed a long hypnotic forefinger at her. “As Bill brilliantly reminds me, our identification of the gentleman as Cousin John is so very tenuous as to be valueless. We do not, in fact, know who he is.”

“But this affair has to involve family matters,” Jess argued. “It can't be anything else. I've never had any government job, or worked for any mysterious scientists, or anything. I mean, I don't have any deadly secrets.”

“Bill is willing to concede that,” David said magnanimously. “Bill asked whether there could be any question of an inheritance.”

Jess looked at the silent Bill in some confusion. He smiled amiably.

“No,” she said, returning his smile; he had such a pleasant face. “There's no money, from what I hear.”

“Just for the sake of argument,” David said, “if there were, who would inherit?”

“Cousin John, I guess. Grandfather cut my father out of his will years ago; his lawyers told Mother that when she wrote after Dad died. But there isn't anything—”

“So you have been told. But, as Bill ably suggests, the old boy may have been hoarding diamonds or securities all these years. Suppose he repents his harsh treatment of his only son. People don't repent much, in real life,” he added parenthetically, “but in fiction they do it all the time. Supposing poor old Grandpapa wants to give you your rightful share. Cousin J. would have to take steps.”

“Why?” Jess demanded in exasperation. “I mean, does a normal person go rushing out to eliminate all the other prospective heirs? Even assuming there was anything to inherit, which there isn't! I never heard such nonsense. And you're forgetting the ring.”

“Proof of identify,” David said airily.

“Nuts,” Jess said rudely.

Bill beamed more broadly, and David nodded, rendered momentarily speechless by the last of the toast.

“Bill's precise comment,” he said thickly. “We do not, he says, have enough information to form any theory. Any at all. Our course of action is clear.”

“Maybe it is to Bill,” Jess said; like David, she was beginning to talk about him as if he were not present. “But not to me.”

“Simple. We must capture one of the enemy and interrogate him.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” Jess extended one finger and scraped up the crumbs from the toast plate. No one had offered her anything to eat, and she was getting hungry.

“Well, we must remember that these blokes, while capable of astonishing lapses, are not stupid. It was rather bright of them to lay in wait for us at Salisbury, after losing us in London. One of them must have seen your futile gesture with the offering bag.”

“He could have,” Jess admitted.

Bill cleared his throat. It sounded like an elephant bull calling his mate. David glanced at him.

“Yes, right. Bill raises the question of why the enemy didn't steal the ring back once they had us in their clutches. Now we'll agree that they didn't have time to search us in the car park; they had to tumble us into their car and get away as quickly as possible. No doubt they planned on searching us at their leisure once they got us to their lair—wherever that may be.”

“But they left my purse,” Jess protested. “Right by the car where I dropped it. They ought to have known I'd put the ring in my purse.”

“Not necessarily; you might equally well have tucked it into your fair bosom, or handed it to me to keep. Still; it's one of those lapses Bill mentioned. Can we deduce from that particular lapse that both are bachelors—not only bachelors, but men who don't know much about the peculiar habits of women? All right, maybe we can't. Of course, they could easily have gone back to collect our luggage once they found we didn't have the ring on either of our persons.”

“I suppose so.”

“Bill is convinced of it. Now, then. We might make a dash for Cornwall. But that course of action has several serious flaws. Either your grandfather is unaware of what has been happening—he'd surely have warned you if he expected trouble—or he's one of the crooks. If he is, we'll be leaping straight into the proverbial fire by looking him up. If he is innocent, and potentially helpful, we're still in trouble; the villains will surely have the family homestead surrounded, since they expect you to go there eventually. We've got to have more information before we make a move of any sort. That's what Bill thinks.”

“Bill is right on the ball,” Jess said. She licked her fingers.

“Bill is what you Americans call a brain,” David said. “Jess, I don't like to criticize your table manners, but must you lick your fingers in that vulgar fashion?”

“I'm starved,” Jess said simply. “You ate all the toast.”

Bill the brain opened his ponderous jaws and spoke.

“There are eggs. In the fridge.”

Jess looked from one expectant face to the other.

“Oh, all right,” she said bitterly. “I might have known. Show me how to work that atrocity of a stove.”

David rose with alacrity.

“While you're cooking, I'll outline Bill's subtle scheme for trapping the nefarious wight we have christened ‘Cousin John.'”

 

“You're sure this was Bill's idea?” Jess asked.

They had just left an inn in a town improbably named Brompton on Avon, and were speeding down a country lane. Branches waved in the breeze and birds sang furiously.

“I helped,” David said. He jerked the wheel to avoid a ruminating cyclist wobbling down the
center of the road, and Jess fell heavily against him. She righted herself.

“We're doing it backwards,” she complained.

“We must; it's a very delicate maneuver. They haven't scouted this route yet, both the landlord and that other bloke said no one had been inquiring after us. Now, when someone does inquire, he'll learn that we were at the inn during the small hours demanding petrol and the road to Wells. The landlord promised to be quite annoyed about being knocked up at an ungodly hour. If our pals miss this place, they'll locate one of the others.”

“This isn't going to work,” Jess said dazedly. “I don't even understand it myself.”

“Certainly it will work, you're simply being difficult. Put yourself in Cousin John's place. What would he do after he lost our trail? First, surely, he'd investigate the hotels in Salisbury, in case we doubled back; he knows we weren't in such splendid condition last night. The process would take part of this morning, since most hotels close early here in the provinces and wouldn't have been open for inquiries last night. Then, when he draws a blank in Salisbury, he'll start on the roads leading out of town. That will be a tedious process; it was late when we left the Sunworshipers, and we might
have passed unobserved. As, in fact, we did. Now we're simply made sure someone did observe us.”

“Yes, but…”

David looked sullen.

In the end, the plan succeeded only too well. They were parked on a side street in Salisbury, arguing, when David suddenly collapsed on the seat, flattening Jess under urgent hands.

“What—”

“Sssh. That was them!”

“They…No! Was it?”

“Indubitably.” David shook hands with himself. “Jeer at Bill, will you? They're on the right road.”

He switched on the ignition and made an illegal turn.

“David, you fool—you're not going to follow them!”

“If they are stupider than I expect, we'll let them spot us,” David said blithely.

This drastic measure proved to be unnecessary. The villains were shrewd enough to find one of the clues which David had so laboriously planted. However, David insisted on driving perilously close behind them and once, when they stopped unexpectedly, he had to take evasive action which landed him in a ditch, from
which he had to be extracted by two sarcastic farmers. They reached Wells more or less simultaneously, before Jess quite had a nervous breakdown, and David cackled fiendishly when the enemy located the hotel at which they had registered that morning. By midafternoon everyone was in his proper position, near the cathedral.

Wells Cathedral sat placidly on its foundations, looking almost exactly like the colored photograph on the cover of the little guide Jess had bought. Even the sky had made a noble effort for the tourists; its blue was artistically spread with fleecy white clouds.

“This is just about my favorite cathedral,” David said. He added in a sotto-voce growl, “Look at it you goat. You're supposed to be acting like a tourist.”

“I want to know where
he
is.”

“Back there by the gate. Muffler wound round his mustache, poor fool. Didn't you see him back at the hotel, lurking till we emerged?”

“Yes, but…I kept wondering who's chasing whom.”

“Bill is following
him
. Come along and stop fretting. You're spoiling the effect.”

They strolled across the bright green grass, accompanied by a number of other sightseers. Jess was delighted to see them. If there was no
safety in numbers, there was, at least, company.

Once inside, though, she paid Wells Cathedral the supreme tribute. For a full two minutes she forgot all about Cousin John.

“I thought you'd like it,” David said complacently.

“It looks almost modern in parts. Those funny upside-down arches. What are they for?”

David plucked the guidebook out of her hand.

“Ermmph. Inverted arches. They were added in the fourteenth century, to support the additional weight of the tower.”

“Thanks. May I have my book back now?”

David turned and let his eye wander over the vaulted interior of the Cathedral.

“He's not in sight. I hope we haven't lost him. Jess, don't you have a mirror or some such gadget you can peer into? I can't keep turning around all the time.”

Jess fumbled in her purse and located her compact.

“I can't keep powdering my nose all the time either. I don't even know what we're doing here. What are you going to do with him if you catch him.
if
, I said.”

David paused beside a chest-high monument which supported a life-sized effigy. The hands
were laid on the breast and the features were worn down in a manner which added nothing to be beauty of the face.

“A Saxon Bishop, of Wells,” Jess read. “I'd hate to have had him for a spiritual comforter.”

“Never mind him. Look.”

Jess looked. Behind the shelter of the tomb, he flipped his coat aside. Protruding rakishly from his belt was a dull-gray object which was unmistakably the butt of a gun.

“You can't. You wouldn't”

“I couldn't even if I would.” David fought his impulses, but not very hard; whisking the gun out of his belt, he pointed it at her and pulled the trigger. “Bang,” he said.

“A toy. That's why you went to that toy shop yesterday.” Jess was torn between laughter and exasperation. “What possible good—”

“We have to urge him out to the car, haven't we? Once in the Jaguar, and the villain is ours. Off we fly, into the open fields somewhere, and then—”

“There he is,” Jess exclaimed, squinting into her mirror. “He just ducked behind that pillar.”

“Hmm. It is a trifle crowded here. Let's gently wend our way toward some more private spot.”

He ambled along the north aisle. Jess trotted behind.

“David, do stop and think. You can't make him walk all the way back to the car with that silly little gun. He'll just run away.”

“Really? Well, perhaps not. How's this? I stick him up with the gun and then you hit him on the head.”

“No.”

“Why not? We can say he had a fit, or something, and we can carry him—”

“No.”

“Spoilsport. All right. Then I stick him up with the gun—”

Jess started to protest and thought better of it; this was one part of the program which David intended to carry out, with or without her cooperation.

“And then Bill rushes in and bonks him on the head. Rest of the plot according to plan. Where is he now?”

“It's practically impossible to see anything in this,” Jess grumbled, shifting the mirror. “Yes, he's still coming. More to the point: Where is Bill?”

“He'll be here when we need him. Let's duck in here. Read the guidebook, dammit, and give him a chance to see where we've gone.”

“Where are we going?”

“The Chapter House stairs, up to the gallery
over Chain Gate. Here, you duffer…”

He flipped the pages of the guidebook and read, in a self-conscious falsetto, “The ethereal beauty of this stair, as one comes upon it through the north transept, has caused many a visitor to call it ‘the heavenly stair.' Indeed its clustered columns, sharp vaulting and—”

“Oh,” Jess said.

For the second time that morning she was given a moment of sheer unadulterated pleasure, and she agreed wholeheartedly with the pompous description in the guidebook. At first glance it was hard to see why the stairs should be so beautiful. They were wide, shallow, simple stone stairs, worn down in the middle with the mutely impressive evidence of sheer age. About midway up the flight, a second, smaller flight went off to the right toward the Chapter House, the main stair proceeding onto a gallery which crossed the street; this, as David read, was for the convenience of the sleepy clergy on their way to sing the Night Office in the Cathedral.

The light fell through high windows down upon the stairs, and the worn, oblique sections of stone caught it and sent it back, faintly golden. It looks like ripples, Jess thought; ripples of light rising instead of falling; a stairway of filtered sunlight, flowing up toward Heaven.
The shape of the curved small flight that led to the Chapter House lifted like some material lighter than stone, in a curve so gracious that it looked natural rather than planned.