The Benevent Treasure Page 8

  ‘Derek, are you really fond of them – at all?’

  He looked round at her for a moment, his dark eyes smiling.

  ‘Of the old dears? But of course I am! What do you take me for?’

  ‘I don’t know – that’s the trouble. And I said really.’

  He burst out laughing.

  ‘Darling, aren’t you being a bit intense? Now suppose I was just a scheming villain like the chap they had here before Alan Thompson. He went off with what cash he could lay hands on and some of the family diamonds. Well, suppose I was like that and you asked me if I was fond of the aunts, what do you suppose I would say? Swear to it every time, wouldn’t I? I’d be a fool if I didn’t – and it’s too much to expect of your luck to let you get away with being both a knave and a fool. So when I tell you that I really am fond of them, you naturally won’t believe me any more than I’d believe myself if I were you, and that gets us exactly nowhere.’

  She said slowly, ‘I think you are fond of Cara.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well, I am, whether you think so or not. They’ve both been very good to me.’

  She went on as if he had not spoken.

  ‘You don’t like it when Olivia bullies her.’

  He put up a hand between them.

  ‘Oh, switch off the X-ray! It’s not decent to look right through one.’

  ‘She does bully her,’ said Candida. ‘I don’t like it either.’

  The conversation stopped there, because they had turned in at the gate of Underhill.

  Candida passed through the empty hall and ran upstairs. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and there was no one about. The Miss Benevents would be resting, and the staff would be in their own quarters. She passed along the winding passages to her room. As she approached it she heard the sound of weeping. It was a low sound made up of sighing breaths and a faint sobbing. The door of the room stood ajar, and the sound came from there. After a moment of hesitation she widened the gap and looked in.

  Miss Cara stood by the cold hearth, her fingers wrung together and the tears trickling down her chin. She said, ‘Alan – ’ under her breath. And then she must have heard Candida cross the threshold, for she started, turned, and put out her hands. The next moment they were covering her face.

  ‘Aunt Cara – what is it?’

  The hands dropped. She peered at Candida.

  ‘I thought – I thought – I was thinking about him – and when you came in – just for a moment I thought – ’

  It was like seeing a child who has been hurt. Candida put her arms round the little trembling creature.

  ‘Dear Aunt Cara!’

  The young warm voice, the words, quite broke Miss Cara down. She began to weep with all a child’s lack of restraint. Candida detached herself for long enough to shut and lock the door, and then returned to put Miss Cara into a chair and kneel beside her. There was nothing she could do except to find the handkerchief which was being groped for and to murmur the only half-articulate words and phrases with which she would indeed have tried to comfort a child.

  As the weeping stilled, Miss Cara herself began to produce words – snatches of sentences – and the name which had so long been forbidden. She said it over and over again, always on the same note of desolation,

  ‘Alan – Alan – Alan – ’ And then, ‘If I only knew – where he was – ’

  Candida said gently, ‘You have never heard?’

  The word came back to her like a sighing echo,

  ‘Never – ’

  ‘You were very fond of him?’

  One of the small stiff hands took hold of hers and held it tight.

  ‘So very – fond of him. But he went away… This was his room – when you came in I thought – ’

  ‘Why did he go?’

  Miss Cara shook her head.

  ‘Oh, my dear, I don’t know. There was no need – indeed there wasn’t. Olivia said he took money and my diamond spray, but I would have given him anything he wanted. He knew that. You see, Olivia doesn’t know everything. I have never told her – I’ve never told anyone. If I tell you, you won’t tell her, or – or laugh at me?’ The clasp on Candida’s wrist became desperate.

  ‘Oh, no, of course I won’t.’

  ‘I’ve never had a secret from her all my life, but she wouldn’t understand. She is so much cleverer than I am, and she has always told me what I ought to do. But clever people don’t always understand everything, do they? Olivia doesn’t understand about being fond of anyone. When Alan went she just said he was ungrateful and she didn’t want to hear any more about him. But you don’t stop being fond of anyone because they do something that is wrong. She didn’t understand that at all.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Aunt Cara.’

  Miss Cara said,

  ‘You are kind. Candida was kind – my sister Candida. She loved your grandfather and she went away with him, and Papa would never allow us to mention her name. I didn’t understand then, but I do now. I would have gone anywhere with Alan if he had wanted me to – anywhere.’ She dropped her voice to a shaking whisper. ‘Do you know, we were going to be married. I’ve never told anyone, but you are kind. Of course it wouldn’t have been a real marriage – there was too much difference in our ages – more than thirty years. It wouldn’t have been right. But if he was my husband, I had what they call a power of appointment and I could leave him quite a lot of the money for his life. I remember the lawyer telling me so when Papa died. He said, “If you marry, Miss Cara, under your grandfather’s will you can use this power of appointment and leave your husband a life interest whether there are any children or not.” And Olivia said, “Then she could use it to leave the life interest to me.” And he said, “I’m afraid not, Miss Olivia. The power of appointment could only be used in favour of a husband. If Miss Cara were to die unmarried, the will provides for the major part of the estate to pass to your next sister, Mrs. Sayle, or her heirs, your own portion remaining just as it is at present.” I have a very good memory, and I have always remembered just what he said. But Olivia was very angry indeed. She waited until he had gone, and then she said our grandfather hadn’t any right to make a will like that, and what was the good of my having the money when I didn’t know how to manage it, and she ought to come in before Candida’s children. Oh, my dear, she said dreadful things! You see, our sister Candida died before Papa did, and Olivia said she hoped Candida’s children would die too, and then she would come into her own. Of course she didn’t mean it, but it was a dreadful thing to say.’

  Candida felt as if something cold had touched her. It didn’t come from Miss Cara – her hand was burning hot. It let go of her wrist now and went up to touch the carefully ordered hair, incongruously black above the ravaged face. She had stopped crying, and though her eyelids were reddened and the smooth powdered surface of her skin had been impaired, she had a relaxed look.

  ‘It’s nice to have someone to talk to,’ she said in quite a pleased voice. ‘But you won’t tell Olivia, will you?’

  Chapter Ten

  On the following day when Candida had finished her driving lesson she found Stephen Eversley waiting for her, his car parked outside the garage. He said briefly,

  ‘Get in – we’re going for a run.’

  ‘But, Stephen – ’

  ‘I want to talk to you. Get in!’

  He was banging the door and backing out before she had managed to produce any of her reasons for wanting to get back early. By the time she did produce them they were threading one of Retley’s narrower streets, and she couldn’t very well cavil at his abrupt, ‘I can’t talk in traffic.’ A sideways glance showed her a frowning profile which she had not seen before. Under a slight surface glow there was the feeling that she rather liked a man who took his own way. Not tiresomely or all the time, but when occasion required. She sat with her hands in her lap and just the beginnings of a smile in her eyes until they ran out upon an open road with fields on either side. When she looked
at him again the profile was as before. She said in her sweetest voice,

  ‘May I speak now? Where are we going?’

  ‘Somewhere where we can talk.’

  ‘What I was trying to say when you wouldn’t let me was that I ought to get back.’

  ‘Not yet. I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Won’t this do?’

  ‘No, it won’t. When I say talk, I mean properly – not with a dozen ears flapping in that damned café, or when I ought to have my mind on the road!’

  ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything on the road except ourselves, does there?’

  He laughed angrily.

  ‘There might be at any moment! I’ve got a feeling you could be aggravating enough to distract me from three motor-buses abreast!’

  ‘Is that a compliment? And do I say thank you?’

  ‘No, it isn’t, and you don’t! We’re going to park here.’

  The road had developed those wide grass verges which foreign visitors so justly consider to be wasteful of land which might be growing something of a more edible nature than grass. Stephen drove on to a green level stretch and stopped the car. Then he turned to face her and said,

  ‘All right – now we can get going.’

  Candida considered him. He had a determined look – determined and purposeful. His hair was ruffled and his eyes were a hard bright blue. She had no idea why she should want to laugh, but she did.

  ‘Well, it’s your programme.’

  ‘What are you being meek about? I don’t like it, and you needn’t think it takes me in! Anyhow what is it all about?. We can’t talk in that café – you know that as well as I do!’

  ‘What do you want to talk about, Stephen?’

  He said, ‘You. How long are you staying at Underhill?’

  ‘I don’t really know. Why?’

  ‘I don’t want you to stay there.’

  His brows were a straight line above frowning eyes. Her own brows lifted a little.

  ‘Dear Stephen, you needn’t see me if you don’t want to.’

  His hand came down upon her knee.

  ‘Look here, I don’t want that sort of thing! I’m serious!’

  Something in her shrank. She didn’t want to know what he meant. She didn’t want to be as serious as all that. She wanted to enjoy the thrust and parry, the advance and retreat, of a surface relationship. She wasn’t ready for anything else – not yet. But she had only to look at him to know that what he had brought her here to say he would say. In a way it pleased her, and in a way she was angry with herself for being pleased. The anger tinged her voice.

  ‘All right, go on.’

  ‘I want you to go away.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t like your being there.’

  ‘Why don’t you like it?’

  ‘I think it would be better if you went away.’

  Her colour had been bright. That is how he saw her, as an angry brightness. She was bare-headed. Her hair shone. Her eyes were darkly blue. And then the brightness went. The carnation left her cheeks and she was pale. She said quite quietly,

  ‘You will have to tell me why.’

  He had known that all along, and he had not thought that it would be hard. It was the sort of thing that came trippingly from the tongue in one of those conversations which you have in your own mind, and which are amazingly intractable when you try to reproduce them in real life. He had to push the words to get them across.

  ‘I don’t like the place. I don’t like you being there. I want you to clear out.’

  ‘You still haven’t told me why.’

  He said with a sudden jerk in his voice,

  ‘Do you suppose I want you to go away? You know I don’t. If you go, I’ll come after you – you know that too. Or if you don’t you’re a lot stupider than I think you are.’

  He hadn’t meant to say anything like that. The things he had meant to say wouldn’t come. He was a fool to have touched her. He removed his hand abruptly.

  This new pale Candida looked at him and said,

  ‘No, I’m not really stupid. You will just have to tell me why you don’t want me to stay at Underbill.’

  He did get it out then. He said,

  ‘I don’t think it’s safe.’

  There was a pause before she said,

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  The trouble was that he didn’t know very well himself. If he had had anything in the way of knowledge to put before her he wouldn’t be sitting here like a tongue-tied fool. All that he had was an echo from the past, some odds and ends of hearsay, and this steady current of feeling setting away from Underhill. He hadn’t liked the place to start with, but it wasn’t any of his business to have likes or dislikes about what only came his way professionally. All the same he hadn’t liked it. The whole situation of the house there under the hill, those cellars into which he had been conducted – there was something about them which promoted more than a misliking. It might have been Miss Olivia Benevent’s cold reluctance to take him there. It might have been partly the feeling that he had not been allowed to make enough of an examination to justify the opinion which was being sought. He had come away angry and frustrated, and had reported that he would have to make a much more detailed inspection before he could advise upon the work to be undertaken. Since when the whole affair appeared to have lapsed. He had two other jobs in the neighbourhood, or he would have had no real pretext for remaining at Retley. He sat there frowning.

  She repeated her words with a difference, slight in the arrangement but with a marked deepening of the manner in which they were said.

  ‘Stephen, what do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t you ever have a feeling about things?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘I’ve got a feeling about you being at Underhill.’

  She was frowning too.

  ‘A feeling – or a prejudice?’

  ‘Why should I have a prejudice?’

  ‘Aunt Olivia could have given you one.’

  ‘Why should she?’

  ‘She can be – very – rude.’

  Stephen laughed.

  ‘To the mere architect? You don’t suppose I should worry about that!’

  ‘You might.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t. Candida, I don’t want to say any more. Can’t you take it that there are things that won’t go into words – and clear out?’

  She had a sudden leaping impulse to do just that. She heard her own voice say,

  ‘I haven’t got anywhere to go, and they know it.’

  ‘How do you mean, you haven’t got anywhere to go?’

  ‘Barbara only had her house on a lease. I couldn’t afford to pay the rent, and somebody else is moving in. I shall have to find a job.’

  ‘Are you looking for one?’

  ‘Not yet They want me to stay on. There’s the family history – I think they’re beginning to realise that it won’t get very far if it’s left to Derek.’

  Stephen said roughly,

  ‘I suppose you know why they want you to stay?’

  ‘Don’t you think it might be because they like having me?’

  His roughness was shot with anger.

  ‘They want to marry you off to their precious Derek!’

  She had been sitting round to face him. She turned now and looked straight ahead through the driving screen. The long green verge stretched away before eyes that were clouded by an angry mist. She said in a small cold voice,

  ‘I think we had better go back.’

  He took hold of her and pulled her round again.

  ‘Don’t be a fool! I want you to listen to me! You don’t care for Derek, and he doesn’t care for you. He’s got a girl in the town – everyone knows that except the Miss Benevents. But that is their plan. When they find out about Derek things aren’t going to be so good for him, or for you. They may find out any day, and when they do there’ll be a blow-up. Look here, Candida, you know that your grandmother was
the middle one of the three sisters – you told me about finding a photograph with their names and ages. Well, my old cousin Louisa Arnold knew them all very well, and she says your grandmother or her descendants come in for the greater part of the estate if Miss Cara dies unmarried.’

  ‘Yes, I knew that. Aunt Cara told me.’

  Stephen said bluntly,

  ‘Well, that cuts Miss Olivia out. Do you suppose she likes it?’

  In her mind Candida heard Miss Cara’s little trembling voice – ‘Oh, my dear, she said dreadful things… Our sister Candida died before Papa, and Olivia said she hoped Candida’s children would die too, and then she would come into her own… It was a dreadful thing to say.’ She spoke to drown the sound of it.

  ‘No – no – of course she doesn’t like it. But there isn’t anything she can do. I mean even if I married Derek it wouldn’t really help.’

  He said grimly,

  ‘She might think it would. He’s an easy-going chap and pretty well under her thumb. But if the plan broke down – ’

  There was something there between them.

  She said, ‘No!’ But he was putting it into words. He said,

  ‘Why did she tell you that the tide wasn’t high until eleven?’

  It was as if she had known what was coming. The shock of saying it was his, the shock of hearing it was hers. The two shocks came together and were one. Everything else went before the impact. She put out her hands, and he took them. The strong clasp hurt her, but she clung to it. She heard herself say,

  ‘No – no – it wasn’t.’

  ‘If you mean it wasn’t the Miss Benevents at the hotel in Eastcliff, you must know perfectly well that it was. I went round there next day, and you had gone, but they hadn’t. Their names were in the visitors’ book, and they passed through the hall whilst I was looking at it. They were there, and because they told you the tide wouldn’t be high until eleven you went walking on the beach and you were nearly drowned.’ And they knew who you were when they told you that, because they had just seen you write your name. You told me all about it when we were stuck up there on the cliff. They saw you write your name – Candida Sayle – and they remarked on it. And right on top of that they told you what a nice walk there was along the beach, and that the tide would not be high until eleven.’