The Wild Island Page 13

  Everything in Castle Beauregard, however ancestral, was also highly painted, decorated and where appropriate varnished. The pictures looked as if they had been newly cleaned. The plum-coloured curtains, with their magnificent dark swags of material and tasselled gold fringes, did not look old. The carpets were thick and soft, as well as being tartan, a combination which put the thought into Jemima's mind that Leonie Beauregard's American money must be responsible for the splendour. For one thing, the interior of the Castle, stone-built as it might be, was not particularly cold. The library was positively hot, yet the log fire was not lit. Was it possible to centrally heat a castle, and in August? There was a strange southern warmth about the place.

  Not only the warmth but also the good, even brilliant, state of repair of the Castle itself contrasted markedly with the shabbinessof that other Beauregard residence at Kilbronnack, to say nothing of the ruined state of Eilean Fas. Every visit to the Castle by the junior branch of the Beauregards must have rubbed in the contrast epitomized by Dives and Lazarus -Dives: Charles, the heir; Lazarus: Ben and all his siblings.

  'Have a smoke,' said Clementina suddenly, extending the stub to Jemima, who shook her head. At which Clementina half minced, half staggered towards Ben and stuck the stub between his lips. Ben did not move. Jemima admired his control once more: the only uncontrolled thing about him she could detect was a vein beating on the side of his temple. After a moment Clementina removed the stub and, standing on tiptoe, put her velvet-clad arms round her cousin's neck. Then she kissed him lightly, on the lips. Ben still did not move.

  'Pretty pretty cousin Clementina,' she repeated. 'Don't you want to kiss her now, Ben ? So pretty.' Once again her words sounded slurred.

  She turned to Jemima.

  'He wanted to kiss me once. He wanted to very much. I didn't tell you that, did I ?'

  'There are quite a lot of things you didn't tell me,' answered Jemima grimly. 'In fact I'm beginning to think you told me a pack of lies the other day at breakfast. Though why you should take the trouble -'

  Clementina giggled, tottered back to the huge sofa by the fireplace - Jemima noticed she was wearing black satin buckled shoes, much too big for her - and threw herself backwards onto it.

  'Then 1*11 tell you the truth now,' she said, still laughing. 'We've plenty of time. While they're getting Uncle Henry to sign the paper giving Eilean Fas for a Memorial Island. And cousin Ben here to back him up. We need that island, the Red Rose needs it. Good for morals. I mean morale. That's what he says. Good for morale.' There were more giggles.

  ‘I’ll be glad to hear the truth,' replied Jemima carefully. 'But why don't you get Lachlan to release Ben while you*re talking? These ropes surely aren't necessary inside the Castle.'

  'But I adore ropes!' cried Clementina with enthusiasm. 'So kinky. Don't you adore ropes, cousin Ben, darling?' Then there was another change of mood and she said quite sharply: 'Lachlan, untie Mr Ben at once. Untie him, I said. And then go and get us some champagne from the cellar. The crystal champagne. We must have some champagne to celebrate. And fetch Uncle Henry too - if he's being good that is - he can celebrate too.'

  Celebrate what? Jemima wondered.

  'I've got no orders to fetch the Colonel from the dungeons,' said Lachlan in what for him was a surly voice. He looked at Aeneas, who shook his head.

  'Orders, whose orders are you talking about?' replied Clementina petulantly. 'It's my orders now at the Castle.' She tapped her small foot in its bent black shoe, so that the paste buckle rattled. Then it fell off. Clementina paid no attention.

  'Our Chief's orders, your Majesty.' Lachlan gazed quite steadily at Clementina as he spoke.

  They were interrupted by the shrill sound of the telephone, a sound to which Jemima found that she had grown so unaccustomed that the ordinary urban noise made her start as though at a tocsin. Clementina seemed uncertain what to do. Then she staggered over to the instrument and picked up the receiver. She said nothing. Someone was speaking rapidly at the other end. Jemima could hear the voice, but not the words.

  'Is it the Chief now ?' asked Aeneas intensely.

  Clementina gave one of her high laughs, nodded, said into the telephone, 'Then you'd better give the warning straight away.' She listened briefly and dropped the receiver without saying goodbye.

  'Fancy that,' she added to the assembled company. 'Fancy that. The Chief is a very worried man. He's coming over here himself. Says he's got something very important to tell me. Danger. He's talking about danger. I may be in danger. What does he mean ?How can I be in danger ? I'm with the Red Rose, aren't I ? I'm their Queen. Cousin Ben's in danger and Uncle Henry's in danger. Even Miss Jemima Shore is in a little bit of danger if the Red Rose turns nasty - naughty Miss Shore carrying on with wicked Uncle Henry. But how can Queen Clementina the First be in danger? Oh, Lachlan, do get the crystal champagne, I want to celebrate. I want to celebrate my accession.'

  Ah, thought Jemima, so that's what we're celebrating.

  'He mustn't be seen,' said Lachlan in a hard voice. 'He won't want the prisoners catching sight of him. You know his orders. That would be dangerous.'

  'Danger! Danger! Give me your answer do. Who's afraid of the big bad danger, the big bad danger,' Clementina sang in a high, rather pretty voice. 'I think I'll put on another record.'

  She put on the record of 'Satisfaction'.

  ‘I can't get any danger out of you,' Clementina sang above the notes of the record.

  Jemima thought they were all in danger, from Colonel Henry in his dungeon to herself in the power of a nest of lunatics. Even Clementina, the alternative Queen of Scotland, had apparently something to fear. She also wondered who the' Chief might be - and whether his existence increased or diminished the danger.

  CHAPTER 15

  Official action

  'Where was the Chief telephoning from?' asked Lachlan aggressively.

  'There were pips,' said Clementina rather vaguely. 'Pip, pip, pip. So it can't have been,' she stopped,' you know where.'

  With a jerk of his head, Aeneas left the room taking Ben with him, the gun held to his back. Ben offered no resistance. It was difficult to see how he could have done so: he had presumably gone to join his father in the dungeons. That left Lachlan-and his gun - against Jemima. Clementina, who had wandered back to her throne, plucking some of the flowers from her hat as she did so .and casting them aside in an Ophelia-like gesture, remained an uncertain quantity.

  'So you'll be staying quiet, Miss Shore,' said Lachian after Ben had gone, reverting to his vicious tone. 'Till we decide what to do with you. That'll be understood, will it not ? Otherwise it's your paramour, the Colonel, who will suffer.'

  Jemima did not deign to answer.

  None of the various bibelots in the library was particularly delicate looking. They included a hunting knife with a golden stag's head as the handle.. Both ends looked lethal. The knife reposed on a table entirely made up of twisted antlers' horns. Above the table an enormous glass case, placed between two bookcases, contained a regal stuffed salmon, swimming

  amidst some brilliant reeds. The label beneath it read: 'Caught by HRH Prince Charles Edward Stuart (HM King Charles III) off Eilean Fas ...' Jemima recalled the jolly note struck in Charles Beauregard's original letter, 'My mother's doing...'

  'Mummy caught that herself,' volunteered Clementina. 'On the home beat. She told me.' Clearly her concentration had not gone entirely. 'That's why she never put it in her book about B P C. Because it wasn't true. She didn't pretend the rose garden was planted by BPC or Sighing Marjorie either, like some people. She was very serious about her history.'

  Jemima shot another stealthy look at the stag's-head knife.

  'I've never seen this famous white rose garden.'

  'Red rose garden.' Clementina glared at her. Jemima cursed herself. Clementina's moment of weakness - or intelligence -had passed.

  'Where the hell's the champagne?' she cried petulantly. 'Hasn't Duncan come back with it yet?'
>
  'Not with the Chief on his way!' exclaimed Lachlan in a shocked voice. 'It would never do for him to find us drinking at this hour in the morning. You know how strong he is against the drink.' The Puritanism was unexpected: she wondered again who the Chief might be, and whether she might get to glimpse him. His identity was doubly intriguing now that the display of guns, the abduction of Colonel Henry, the detention of Ben and herself, had rudely jolted her complacency concerning the Red Rose. She was obliged to take them seriously as a force: it was no longer possible to dismiss them as a mildly eccentric but fundamentally harmless bunch of royalist fanatics.

  After a while Clementina began to wander round the library again. She played some more music, loud, aimless. The champagne did not arrive. Nor for that matter did anyone else. Jemima considered it her duty to edge in the direction of the knife. Lachlan, showing signs of nervousness, .put down his gun and demanded a cigarette from Clementina. She tossed him one out of her woven handbag. It was presumably an ordinary cigarette.

  The time passed very slowly, according to the ornate golden clock, French perhaps, supported by rampant stags in baroque attitudes, on the heavily carved mantelpiece.

  'I could do with a dram myself,' observed Lachlan wistfully after a while. 'Chief or no Chief. I'm no too fond of the champagne, you understand.' He sounded apologetic.

  'You drank enough of it with Charles in the old days.' Clementina was cross.

  *I was preferring the ancient whisky, though. The great old barrel.'

  'You certainly were. I've never seen anyone as drunk as Lachlan on our last birthday. It's extraordinary stuff. Dark brown. Lays people out like flies. One hundred and twenty per cent proof, or a thousand and twenty per cent proof, something like that. Over a hundred years old, Uncle Henry told us. He nearly had a fit when we started to lay into it, the moment Charles was twenty-one, and slosh it about to the ghillies and Lachlan and other good souls like him.'

  At very long last - they had surely waited much longer than an hour - the noise of a car was heard. Distant at first, then growing stronger as it puttered up the valley.

  Clementina gave a surprised little cry and stepped back from the window.

  'Oh, it's not him. It's -' Lachlan sat up sharply, threw down his cigarette and grabbed the gun. In the split second his attention was diverted, Jemima made a dive for the knife with the stag's-head handle and stuffed it down her boot. She blessed the fashion for wide-cuffed cowboy boots. It felt uncomfortable, but safe.

  'How weird!’ Where's the Chief, then?' Clementina sounded genuinely puzzled. The noise of the car grew louder and Jemima reckoned from the bumping, grating sound that it was just crossing the drawbridge; then the most extraordinary sound of singing from downstairs greeted her ears, followed by running footsteps and cries, mixed with protests and more snatches of a very drunken, very Scottish song which as it grew nearer sounded increasingly obscene. Then Aeneas burst into the library, hauling Duncan by his collar. The old man was still trying to sing.

  'He's got out,'he panted. 'The devil. He's gone. Bribed him with the whisky and went.'

  'It wasn't the drink at all, so it wasn't. It was the paper. We was just celebrating the paper.' As the tears coursed down Duncan's cheeks, he held out a crumpled piece of paper.

  'You drivelling old fool,' snarled Aeneas, shaking the old man by his collar. 'What good will this paper do you ? Do you think the laird will honour that?'

  'He's promised me the lodge. The Colonel would'na break his word. He's a man of honour.'

  'He'll break you more like,' commented Lachlan. 'You'll never stay on the Estate now. Not now you've tried to force the Colonel to sign that paper.'

  As an expression of maudlin horror and dismay crossed Duncan's features, Jemima saw her chance. The library door was open. She pelted out of it, slamming it behind her. A vast key, shining and brassy like everything at Castle Beauregard, rattled in the lock as she did so. She turned it. It worked. The lock clicked fast as frantic shouts from the three men trapped inside reached her together with, a moment later, the strong rattling of the door itself. But the door held. Thank God for Leonie Beauregard who had refurbished the Castle in such a splendidly robust style. No rusty keys in locks here.

  Jemima ran as fast as she could down the broad stairs to the arched entrance to the dungeon, scrabbling and hobbling in order to remove the stag's-head knife from her boot as she did so. At that moment the sound of other voices, urgently talking -in the armoury, or at any rate inside the Castle - reached her. The unknown visitor - the Chief or another - was within. Jemima was taking no chances. She shrank behind the arch and began to creep as quietly as possible down the stairs.

  Footsteps, it sounded like a single man, went past her and right on up the main staircase. Let the unknown, whoever it was, cope with the imprisoned men and Queen Clementina. She had not dared to pause long enough to remove the key from the lock. It was up to her now to find Ben Beauregard.

  Dungeons ? There was now a maze of new staircases facing her below the level of the ground. But her task was made unexpectedly easy by the mint-new condition of even the subterranean regions of this castle. There were actually notices in Victorian Gothic directing her. to the cellars - she found herself by the entrance to a large room, vast in style, door open, clean, white-washed, vaulted. Not only the racks of bottles but the stink of whisky emanating from an outsize barrel convinced her that here had been Duncan's downfall.

  Then she heard a noise behind her. She stopped. The noise stopped too. Someone was following her. Heart thumping, Jemima wondered why, if her pursuer were a member of the Red Rose, he did not immediately brutally grab her. She started to walk on gingerly, extremely gingerly, in the direction indicated for the dungeons. There was no sign of a guard or sentry. Had they left Ben quite unguarded in the furore of his father's escape and the unknown's arrival?

  Another stealthy noise behind her. She tested it by stopping. But her follower was quick to follow suit. As Jemima proceeded along the narrowing passage, it was like playing an elaborate game of mediaeval grandmother's footsteps. Then she saw the dungeon - clearly labelled. The door was open. A body - Ben - was slumped in one corner. The ropes were wound round it. He looked horribly inert.

  She gave a little cry and tried too late to stifle it. Then a strong muscular arm reached at her from behind and stifled her voice completely. Jemima tried to scream and could not: then she struggled in earnest.

  'Keep still, darling,' said a voice in her ear. 'I told you I'd be back. I didn't expect you to come looking for me.'

  At the same moment as Jemima recognized the voice, deep even in its low tones, she also felt a wave of violent recognition for the physical touch of Henry Beauregard.

  'Ben,’ she mouthed.

  'Shh,' he said, not letting her go. 'It's only the dummy. Ben's got away.'

  Jemima felt her body relax. She realized how corpse-like the body in the dungeon had looked to her. First the father, then the son ... The dummy had a lot to answer for. The Colonel took his hand from her mouth and kissed her. It was done with a certain carelessness as one might kiss a child who has been soothed.

  'You poor darling,' he said gently, stroking her cheek, and pushing back the hair which had fallen over her face.

  'Ben's gone to get help ?' asked Jemima, still panting slightly from her journey, her fright and now the reassuring kiss at the end of it all.

  'Help, I am help, aren't I ?'

  'I mean, help; proper help. The Red Rose, I mean, aren't you going to do anything about them - they kidnapped you,'

  'For God's sake, girl, I am doing something about them!' exclaimed the Colonel, his voice getting louder as he struck a note of real indignation.

  'What about the police ? You must send for the police. First they kidnapped you, then they locked you up. They locked us up. Besides, they've got guns, they were firing shots over the Land-Rover.'

  'They didn't kidnap me, as a matter of fact. There was a signal outside the window. A ki
nd of whistle: family signal, something we use out in the woods. I don't know how they found it out. You were asleep. I left that note and went downstairs. And they jumped me. Three against one. As for the police, these are the sort of blackguards who simply need a good thrashing from some of my stronger ghillies,' he responded robustly.

  'The guns—' began Jemima again. He ignored her.

  'Besides, it didn't take me very long to outwit them. Duncan never has had a head for drink. None of his family can take it.'

  'And you promised him the lodge. For ever. And he believed you.'

  'All part of his general idiocy when he's had a drop. As if I'd ever give him the Old Lodge - we need the lodge. He knows that perfectly well: it's right in the heart of the Glen. He can whistle for his lodge. The old fool.' The Colonel sounded almost as contemptuous as Aeneas had done.

  'But you're not going to sack him ?'

  The Colonel looked at her as if she were insane.

  'Sack Duncan Stuart? But he's worked on the Estate all his life. Besides, his son's a rotten type. Have to look after poor old Duncan, y'know. Can't go sacking him at his age.'

  'His son—'

  'Aeneas Stuart. Red-haired bastard - in every sense of the word. You must have seen him. He's the one who's really behind the Red Rose up here. Too clever by half. A real Red. Went to Aberdeen University and came back with a lot of half-baked ideas about land for the people, and knew less about the land and farming round here than his own grandfather who was an illiterate crofter. Not Duncan's fault: no brains to speak of there. The brains came from his mother Ishbel who was head housemaid before the war: wonderful head on her shoulders, but always causing trouble with the rest of the servants. You know the type: we never could keep a cook when she was around. Eleven cooks in one year, till we sacked Ishbel. You've probably been through the same thing yourself.'