Читать книгу John Harding 2-Book Gothic Collection - John Harding - Страница 26

The Van Hoosier carriage couldn’t have been more than halfway down the drive when Miss Taylor was behind us at the front door, from where Giles and I were watching Theo and his mother disappear from our lives for at least six months, and perhaps, I reflected bitterly, perhaps, for ever.

‘Oh! Have I missed them?’ she said in a way that made me think she ought to be in the same theatre company as Giles when he pretended never to have been in the library before, it so unconvinced. ‘Well, perhaps they will call again soon.’

Giles’s wave died in mid-air as the carriage finally turned into the main road and disappeared from view. ‘Oh, no, miss, not for a long time. Not for months and months.’

‘Oh, how so?’

She casualled as though uninterested, but did I detect just a hint of triumph on her lips, the ghost of a smile?

Giles looked up at her as she closed the door, drawing us back inside. ‘Theo is going to Italy and France and all those sorts of places. It’s the other side of the Atlantic, you know.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yes, miss, you see those places are in Europe on one side of the ocean and we’re here in the Americas on the other side and it’s three thousand miles between.’

Our new governess let go Giles’s misunderstanding. ‘What a shame,’ she said, meaningfulling me a glance. ‘We shall just be on our own, then, shan’t we?’ She turned and started off toward the stairs and we followed her.

‘Are you feeling better, miss?’ puppied Giles, catching her up.

‘Oh, yes, thank you, Giles, I’m much better now.’

And the way she louded that last word, flinging it back over her shoulder, I knew it was meant just for me.

Afterward, lying in my bed, I thought of Theo and how I would miss him and how his enforced abandonment of me left me wholly in the clutches of this fiend, for such I believed her to be, and that led me on to considering the morning’s visit and how Miss Taylor had suddened her faint. Her quick recovery obvioused it to me that she had not been ill at all, but had feigned the whole thing, and there could be but one reason for that, namely that she had wished to avoid meeting Theo and his mother.

I puzzled me awhile over that. Why would she wish to avoid them? What could it mean? I tossed and turned, which was beginning to be my normal bedtime routine these nights, ever since she came.

I eventuallied several thoughts. What was it about Mrs Van Hoosier that made Miss Taylor shun her presence? The answer had to be that Mrs Van Hoosier was not a servant but gentlefolk, and therefore not under the same constraints as Mrs Grouse and Meg and Mary and the like. She would be at liberty to make inquiries to Miss Taylor, to question her about her birth and family and where else she had governessed before. A woman like Mrs Van Hoosier struck me as someone who would worm the secrets out of a stone – though, of course, Miss Taylor couldn’t know that. But no matter what Theo’s mother’s character might have been, it obvioused that our new governess wished to avoid any investigation into her past.

Other things struck me too. Mrs Grouse and Meg and John and Mary were simple folk who did not look beyond the obvious. Someone of a superior class likelied to be that much more observant. What if in future the police – my old friend the captain, perhaps – should be involved? What if Miss Taylor seized my brother and vanished, or – I hated even to think the word – murdered him and then disappeared? A woman of Mrs Van Hoosier’s station would be more likely to provide an accurate description of her, to be able to place her accent, identify her clothing and provide other clues that might lead to her eventual detection and arrest. All this Miss Taylor had sought to avoid.

If I were right (and what other motives could Miss Taylor have had for avoiding the Van Hoosiers?), then something else must also be true. That what Miss Taylor was planning was expected to be executed before the Van Hoosiers returned, or she would not have been so pleased by the news of their temporary absence. Whatever it was, it was going to happen in less than six months, it was going to happen soon.

Only one thing did not make sense to me. If her object was to harm Giles, then why not do it now? Unless, of course, she wanted to fake some accident to him so that she was not held responsible and was waiting only until she precised the means. If that were so then it might be at any time. Chance might sudden it and she advantage the opportunity on the spur of the moment. I would have to watch her like a hawk.

But if she meant simply to take Giles, and her seeming fondness for him seemed to suggest this, then why not simply act now? What on earth was she waiting for? At first this bothered me because it did not make sense, until I began to think about what might happen after she had taken him. Suppose it was for a ransom, then she would have to steal him away and keep him hidden and perhaps for some considerable time before the ransom was paid. To even take Giles away she would need his cooperation and before she could guarantee that she would have to gain his confidence, something not to be done in a minute. And if it were not for a ransom, if she intended to keep Giles for ever, then she would need first to gain a secure place in his affection.

That was it! That was surely it! She was merely waiting until Giles was sufficiently attached to her to swallow some story she would tell him about why he must steal away with her, and subsequently remain with her, and then she would be gone. It so obvioused I kicked myself that I hadn’t seen it before. And she had libraried me to keep me out of her hair while she practised her wiles on Giles, every day inching him further and further away from me. Why, already he had forgotten the incident at breakfast, her sudden terrifying outburst of anger, and fawned about her as though she were the most wonderful person who ever lived. I resolved to speak to Giles about it, to warn him of the danger he was running.

Next day, though, it far from easied to find a time when I could alone him. Miss Taylor fetched him from his room first thing and took him down to breakfast with her and from then on they togethered almost always. It was only now when I sought to speak to him that I realised how much she had already sequestered him from me, how rarely the two of us ever aloned together any more. Eventually we were let out to play in the gardens as a relief from lessons for Giles, and to fresh-air us both. Even then, Miss Taylor accompanied us outside and seated herself on a recliner on the terrace, from which she watchful-eyed us. At one point, when I moved close to Giles and began to whisper that I needed to talk to him urgently, I looked up to see her already outseated and heading toward us. I instanted away from him and shouted out, ‘Can’t catch me, can’t catch me!’ and took off into the shrubbery, Giles tumbling after me.

As you will remember, the shrubbery was neglected and overgrown. I sped through it, following a path that Giles and I knew well but a newcomer would have difficulty in discerning, my brother at my heels. Somewhere I could hear Miss Taylor threshing around in the uncontrolled jungle, blundering after us. I hid myself in a rhododendron bush and listened for Giles’s footsteps. As he passed by, I reached out an arm, grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him into the bush, my other hand clamping his mouth before he had a chance to cry out. I silent-fingered him to keep quiet and we lay like that, hardly breathing, until we heard Miss Taylor go crashing past. When I was quite sure she was gone, I whispered to him, ‘Giles, I have to talk to you.’

He squirmed under my grip. ‘I don’t want to talk. We can talk any time. This isn’t the time for talking, it’s the time for play.’

‘You don’t understand,’ I hissed. ‘We don’t ever have time to talk like we used to. We’re never alone any more. I can’t talk to you without Miss Taylor hearing everything. Have you not noticed?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose. But then, what does it matter if she hears? Why should we care?’

‘Because I am sure she is not who she pretends to be. I think she has come here for some evil purpose of her own. I am half convinced she isn’t human, that she is some kind of being from the spirit world, some sort of ghost.’

Giles excited at this, although I could see he was more than a little afraid, too. ‘A ghost? But why should she come here if she has no connection to Blithe? Whose ghost could she be?’

I bit my lip. ‘I don’t know, I haven’t figured that bit out yet.’

He thought too, a process that never lasted very long with Giles, wrinkling his brow. After perhaps half a minute his face suddened alight. ‘I know! It’s obvious, Flo, truly it is. She must be the ghost of Miss Whitaker, come back to the place where she met her untimely death…’

‘Oh Giles,’ I despaired, ‘don’t be silly. She’s nothing like Miss Whitaker. They don’t even have the same kind of hair.’

‘You can’t know that, Flo. Who says ghosts keep the same appearance as they had when they were alive? Maybe they disguise themselves to fool the people who are still living.’

Giles was building this up into a great game, a big pretend that he no more believed than I did, which was not at all serving my purpose. ‘Giles, you have to listen to me. You have to take care. You must not let her steal her way into your affections. She wants to gain your trust so that she can trick you into going away with her.’

Giles stared at me, amazed. Then he chuckled. ‘But why should she do that, Flo?’ He looked at me as though at a stranger. ‘Flo, you do say the oddest things.’ His brow wrinkled again. ‘Anyway, if she is Miss Whitaker, why should she want to harm me, or you, come to that? Perhaps she just wants to haunt the last place she knew when she was alive. Perhaps she liked being our governess and wanted to do it again. Perhaps –’

At that moment there was a rustling nearby and before I could say another word to my brother, the leaves of the rhododendron parted, revealing in the gap Miss Taylor’s face. ‘Ah, there you are,’ she said, falsing a smile, ‘my two lost chickens. Come now, children, you’ve had long enough for play. It’s time to get back to our books.’