Виктория Холт - Bride of Pendorric

The light had shown me me grating and I ran stumbling towards it shouting: ” We’re here … in the vault. Favel and Hyson are here in the vault!” The light came again and stayed. I recognised Deborah’s voice.

“Favel! Is that you, Favel?”

“Here,” I cried.

“Here!”

” Oh, Favel! … thank God! Hyson …?”

“Hyson’s here with me. We’re locked in the vault.”

“Locked in …”

” Please get us out … quickly.”

” I’ll be back … soon as I can.” The light disappeared and Hyson and I stood still hugging each other.

It seemed hours before the door was opened and Roc came striding down the steps. We ran to him—Hyson and I—and he held us both against him.

” What the …” he began. ” You gave us a nice fright….” Morwenna was there with Charles, who picked Hyson up in his arms and held her as though she were a baby.

Their torches showed us the damp walls of the vault, the ledges with the coffins; but Hyson and I turned shuddering away and looked towards the door.

” Your hands are like ice,” said Roc, chafing them. ” We’ve got the cars by the lych gate. We’ll be home in a few minutes.” I lay against him in the car, too numb, too exhausted for speech. I did manage to ask the time.

“Two o’clock,” Roc told me.

“We’ve been searching since soon after eight.”

I went straight to bed and Mrs. Penhalligan brought me hot soup. I said I shouldn’t be able to sleep; in fact I should be afraid to, for fear I should dream I was back in that dreadful place. But I did sleep—almost immediately; and I was untroubled by dreams. It was nine o’clock that morning before the sun shining through the windows woke me. Roc was sitting in a chair near the bed watching me, and I felt very happy because I was alive.

“What happened?” asked Roc.

” I heard someone singing and the door of the vault was open.”

“You thought the Pendorrics had left their coffins and were having a little singsong?”

“I didn’t know who it was. I went down the steps and then … the door was locked on me.”

“What did you do?”

“Hammered on the door—called out. Hyson and I both used all our strength against it. Oh Roc … it was horrible.”

” Not the most pleasant spot to spend a night, I must say.”

“Roc, who could have done it? Who could have locked us in?”

” No one.”

” But someone did. Why, if Deborah hadn’t come there looking for us we’d still be there. Heaven knows how long we should have been there.”

“We decided to search every inch of the land for miles around. Deborah and Morwenna did Pendorric village, and the Darks joined up with them.”

” It was wonderful when we heard Deborah’s voice calling us. But it seemed ages before she came back.”

“She thought she needed the key, and there’s only one I know of—to the vault. It’s kept in the cupboard in my study, and the cupboard is locked; so she had to find me first.”

” That’s why it took so long.”

” We didn’t waste any time, I can tell you. I couldn’t imagine who could have got at the key and unlocked the vault. The sexton borrowed it some weeks ago. He must have thought he locked it.”

” But someone locked us in.”

Roc said: “No, darling. The door wasn’t locked. I discovered that when I tried to unlock it.”

“Not locked! But …”

” Who would have locked you in?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.”

” No one has a key except me. There has only been one for years. The key was locked in my cupboard. It was hanging on the nail there when I went to get it.”

” But Roc, I don’t understand how …”

” I think it’s simple enough. It was a misty evening, wasn’t it? You passed the lych gate and went into the churchyard. The door of the vault was open because old Pengally hadn’t locked it when he was there a few weeks ago and the door had blown open.”

” It was a very still evening. There was no wind.”

” There was a gale the night before. It had probably been open all day and no one had noticed it. Few people go to the old part of the graveyard. Well, you saw it open, and went inside. The door shut on you.”

“But if it wasn’t locked why didn’t it open when we pushed with all our strength?”

” I expect it jammed. Besides, you probably panicked to find yourself shut in. Perhaps if you’d not believed the door was locked you would have discovered it was only jammed.”

” I don’t believe it.”

He looked at me in astonishment.

“What on earth’s in your mind?”

” I don’t quite know . but someone locked us in. “

“Who?”

” Someone did it.”

He smoothed the hair back from my forehead.

” There’s only one person who could,” he said. ” Myself.”

” Oh Roc no!”

He threw himself down beside me and took me into his arms. ” Let me tell you something, darling,” he said. ” I’d far rather have you here with me than in that vault with Hyson.” He was laughing; he did not understand the chill of fear which had taken possession of me.

I could now no longer delude myself. I had to face up to all the fears which I had refused to look in the face during the last weeks.

Someone had deliberately lured me into the vault and locked me in, for I refused to believe Roc’s theory that the door had jammed. In the fast moments it was true that I may have panicked; but when I had discovered Hyson and sought to comfort her, I had regained my composure. We had both tried to open that door with all our strength and had failed. And the reason was that it had been locked. This could mean only one thing. Someone wanted to harm me. Suppose Deborah had not come by? Suppose she had not heard our call, how long could we have lived in the vault? There was a little air coming in, it was true; but we should have starved to death eventually, because it was a fact that few people came that way, and if they did we should not have heard them unless they had come close to the grating and called us.

It might have been one week. two weeks. We should have been dead by then.

I believed that that was what someone was trying to do: kill me, but in a way which, when my death was discovered, would appear accidental.

Who?

It would be the person who would benefit most from my death. Roc? I couldn’t believe that. I was perhaps illogical, as women in love are supposed to be; but I was not going to believe for one moment that Roc would kill me. He wouldn’t kill anyone—least of all me. He was a gambler, I knew; he might even be unfaithful to me; but he could never in aay circumstances commit murder.

If I died, he would be very rich. He had married me knowing that I was the granddaughter of a millionaire; he had brought me back to my grandfather, and it must have occurred to him that I would become his heir. He needed money for Pendorric, and Roc and I were partners so that my fortune would make certain that Pendorric remained entirely ours. This was all true; and whether I died or not, Pendorric was safe.

I refused to look beyond that; but I did believe that some one had locked me into the vault in the hope that I should not be discovered until I was dead.

That brought me back to the all-important question: Who?

I thought back over everything that had happened and my mind kept returning to the day when Roc had first come to the studio. My father must have known who he was as soon as he heard his name—there could not be many Pendorrics in the world—yet he had not told me. Why?

Because my grandfather had not wanted me to know. Roc was to report on me first, take pictures of me. I smiled ruefully. That was typical of my grandfather’s arrogance. As for Father, he had probably done everything he did for what he would believe to be my good. And the day he died? Roc had seemed strange that day. Or had he? He had come back to the studio and left my father to bathe alone. And when we knew what had happened had he seemed . relieved, or had I imagined it?

I must stop thinking of Roc in this way, because if I was going to find out who was seeking to harm me I must look elsewhere. There had been an occasion when I had taken the dangerous cliff path after the rain, and the warning had been removed. I remembered how uneasy I had felt then. But it was Roc who had remembered the path and dashed after me. It was reassuring to remember that. But why should it be reassuring? Because it showed that Roc loved me and wanted to protect me; that he could not possibly have had a hand in this. But of course I knew he hadn’t.

Who, then?

My mind went at once to those women in whom, I believed he had once been interested . perhaps still was. One could never be quite sure with Roc. Rachel? Althea? And what of Dinah Bond?

I remembered that she had once told me that Morwenna had been locked in the vault. What of the conversation I had heard between Morwenna and Charles? Oh, but it was natural that they should talk of my inheritance, that they should be pleased because Roc had married an heiress instead of a penniless girl. Why should Morwenna want to be rid of me? What difference could it make to her?

But if I were out of the way my fortune would go to Roc and he would be free to marry . Rachel . Althea?

Rachel had been there when we had talked about the bride in the oak chest; and if I could believe Dinah Bond, she had, long ago, locked Morwenna in the vault. She had known where to get the key; but there was only one key and Roc had that; it was an enormous key that hung in his cupboard, and the cupboard was kept locked. When they had unlocked the vault they had had to find Roc first because he had the only key.

Rachel had known this and she had managed somehow, all those years ago, to get the key from Roc’s father’s cupboard. Rachel, I thought.

I had never liked her from the moment I had first seen her.

I was going to watch Rachel.

Morwenna said that such an experience was bound to have shocked me, and I ought to take things easily for the next few days. She was going to see that Hyson did.

” I’d rather it had been Lowella who was locked in with you,” she told me one day when I came out of the house and saw her working on the flower-beds on one of the front lawns.

“Hyson’s too sensitive as it is.”

“It was a horrible experience.”

Morwenna straightened up and looked at me. ” For both of you. You poor dear! I should have been terrified.”

A shadow passed across her face and I guessed she was remembering that occasion, so long ago, when Rachel had locked her in and refused to let her out until she made a promise.

Deborah came out of the house.

“It’s a lovely day,” she said.

“I’m beginning to wonder what my own garden is looking like.”

” Getting homesick?” asked Morwenna. She smiled at me. ” Deborah’s like that. When she’s on Dartmoor she thinks of Pendorric, and when she’s here she gets homesick for the

“Yes, I love both places so much. They both seem like home to me. I’ was thinking, Favel, this horrible affair … it’s been such a shock, and you’re not looking so well. Is she, Morwenna?”

” An experience like that is bound to upset anyone. I expect she’ll have fully recovered in a day or so.”

” I thought of going to the moor for a week or so. Why not come with me, Favel? I’d love to show you the place.”

” Oh … how kind of you!”

Leave Roc? I was thinking. Leave him to Althea? To Rachel? And how could I rest until I had solved this matter? I must find out who had a grudge against me, who wanted me out of the way. No doubt it would be very restful to spend a week with Deborah, but all the time I should be longing to be back in Pendorric.

” As a matter of fact,” I went on, ” I’ve got such lots to do here .. and there’s Roc….”

” Don’t forget,” Morwenna reminded Deborah, ” they haven’t been married so very long.”

Deborah’s face fell. ” Well, perhaps some other time—but I thought that you needed a little rest and …”

” I do appreciate your thinking of it and I shall look forward to coming later on,” ” I wish you’d take Hyson,” said Morwenna. ” This business has upset her more than you think.”

” Well, I must take dear Hyson,” replied Deborah. ” But I did so want to show Favel our old home.”

I laid my hand on her arm. ” You are kind, and I do hope you’ll ask me again soon.”

” Of course I shall. I shall positively pester you until you accept.

Were you going for a walk? “