Chapter Nine
NINE
“By Jove, an intruder!” exclaimed Carlin. “Tally-ho! Don’t worry, I’ll nab him! Hey, you, stop!” He sprang after the monkish shape.
“Yoicks, tally-ho!” Rhino, too, rumbled into motion. Like his namesake, he was slow to get going but once under way would be very hard to stop.
But Daisy, as she turned, had seen Pritchard and Howell exchanging a conspiratorial glance of glee. Remembering Pritchard’s mysterious eagerness to show her the grotto by night, she caught Carlin’s arm as he passed her.
“Hold on! Something tells me our host is quite well acquainted with this particular ghost.”
“What?” asked the bemused young man. “Let go, he’ll get away!”
Uncle and nephew had managed to grab Rhino before he got up steam.
Pritchard chuckled. “We are,” he confessed.
“Mr. Armitage,” said Julia.
“Exactly, Miss Beaufort. I should have realised Mrs. Fletcher was too knowledgeable to be fooled.”
“I was just about to say, the owners of grottoes in the eighteenth century often had an aged and infirm retainer in residence playing the hermit to give visitors a thrill.”
“He certainly gave me a thrill,” Lucy admitted dryly. “Not that I believe in ghosts, but—”
“I do.” Lady Ottaline played the fragile damsel to the hilt. “Are you sure that wasn’t … ?”
“Quite sure,” Howell assured her. “Come back to his lair and see.” He offered his arm, but she chose Rhino’s.
Julia had already set off in pursuit of Armitage. Rhino followed her, Lady Ottaline attached to him at the elbow. The others went after them.
“I wonder if a photo of the hermit in daylight would look silly?” Lucy said to Daisy. She started muttering to herself about exposure and focus and filters.
Sir Desmond was on Daisy’s other side. “Quite a surprise,” he murmured.
“I’d never have credited Pritchard with sufficient imagination.
” He sounded slightly amused, but Daisy got the impression that underneath, well hidden by his shell of imperturbability, was a different sentiment.
Anger? Surely he couldn’t be seriously annoyed by the apparition’s having given his wife a shock.
Lady Ottaline was much easier to read than Sir Desmond.
She had been startled but not, Daisy was sure, genuinely frightened.
Was her husband unable to see through her penchant for melodrama?
He hadn’t rushed to her side to comfort her.
Something else must have provoked him, or Daisy had mistaken his emotions.
The latter was probably the case, she decided. She wasn’t well acquainted with him, and she couldn’t even see his face clearly. In fact, she was indulging in pure speculation, as Alec would undoubtedly have pointed out to her.
As she pondered, they penetrated deeper into the grotto, passing a number of statues on the way.
Most stood in niches in the walls, impossible to identify in the prevailing gloom.
Ahead however, a stalwart Neptune barred the way.
From the navel down, as a change from the usual scanty drapery about the loins, he was modestly clad in stylised marble waves with the heads of horses in place of whitecaps.
From this frozen sea emerged a naked torso, a head adorned with the usual wildly curling hair and beard, and two muscular arms, one wielding a trident.
Lucy stopped to contemplate the water-god. “I wonder if it’s always being wet that makes his hair curl. Rain plays havoc with mine.”
Daisy laughed. “I bet you’re the first person in history who’s posed that particular question!”
“What about the original artist who depicted him that way? Back in Rome or Ancient Greece or wherever it was?”
“Neptune or Poseidon. Sir Desmond, which do you—? Oh, he’s disappeared.”
“He went round behind the statue. Everyone must have gone that way.”
“Yes, I can hear them. Come on.”
Poseidon stood sentry to one side of a low arch. His wife Amphitrite guarded the other side, crowned with shells and crab-claws, dolphins frolicking about her legs. Beyond the arch was a short tunnel.
“It’s much lighter at the end,” Lucy said thankfully. “I’m getting tired of groping through the dark.”
“Hush a minute. I heard Rhino say something about a second monk.”
“Here’s a stone one,” Lord Rydal cawed as Daisy and Lucy emerged from the tunnel. “Much to be preferred to the real thing, what?”
“St. Vincent Ferrer,” said Pritchard, “the patron saint of plumbers.”
“Popish nonsense!”
“What makes you think you have the right to disparage anyone’s religion?
” Pritchard demanded angrily. He had put up with a lot from the earl, but apparently this was the last straw.
“I happen to be a Methodist, and as you can see, I’ve put St. Vincent out here with a lot of pagan gods, not in a shrine in the house, but I don’t hold with disrespecting other people’s beliefs. ”
His outburst stunned Rhino. “Hold on, hold on! No offence meant. I just say what I think.”
“It’s about time you started thinking before you say.”
“Gosh,” Lucy whispered in Daisy’s ear, “I thought Pritchard was a bit of a milksop, but Rhino is positively cowering.”
“A milksop wouldn’t have risen to be Bathroom King. Though I wouldn’t exactly say Rhino is cowering.”
“Perhaps not quite, but I’ve never seen him even slightly taken aback before. It must have been a severe shock to the system. I bet he’s seething.”
“He wouldn’t try to …”
“Try to what?”
“Oh, you know, get his own back.”
“Do him in, you mean? Don’t be silly, of course not. You’ve got murder on the brain, my girl. That’s what comes of marrying a detective. I’m going to see what excuse Mr. Armitage has for playing the fool in a monk’s robe.”
“You were talking to him at dinner,” Daisy said, trying to keep an eye on Pritchard and Rhino as they went towards the hermit. His cowl thrown back to reveal Armitage’s roundish, snub-nosed, sandy-haired, altogether un-ascetic countenance, he was chatting with Carlin and Julia. “Who is he?”
“Some sort of colonial,” Lucy said vaguely. “Canadian? Yes, Canadian. Quite amusing. Mr. Armitage, I do think you might have warned me you were planning to scare us all to death.”
“Would you have been scared to death if I’d warned you, eh, Lady Gerald?” he asked with a grin.
“I must say,” Carlin put in, “you ladies don’t look as if you turned a hair.”
“Hairdressers can work wonders these days,” said Daisy.
“Naturally, I wouldn’t have risked making your hair stand on end if I hadn’t known modern hairdressing methods could put it right in a trice.”
“I, for one,” said Julia grandly, “am quite capable of brushing my own hair. Lucy, Daisy, Mr. Armitage has been telling us that Mr. Pritchard employs him to play the hermit.”
“Not exactly ‘employs,’ eh? He doesn’t usually bother with a hermit at this time of year, but I wanted to take a look at some old papers he has in the house, and he offered me access and room-and-board in exchange for playing hermit now and then.
He’d already heard from you, Lady Gerald, and Mrs. Fletcher, about putting the grotto in your book.
In the summer, when he has constant requests to see it, he hires an actor full-time.
He’s even built in quite a decent sort of bed-sitting-room through there. ” He pointed at another archway.
“Gas and water laid on, I assume,” Lucy drawled.
“But of course. All the same, I’m glad he doesn’t expect me to live there at this time of year. In the summer it would be OK.”
Pritchard came over to them. Daisy looked to see if Rhino was pouting in a corner, but he had joined the Wandersleys and Howell.
He was lighting a cigarette yet again, and his expression was no more bad-tempered than usual.
No doubt Pritchard’s rebuke had disconcerted him for only a moment.
In fact, if anyone was pouting, it was Lady Ottaline.
Daisy wondered momentarily what irked her. However, what little she had seen of the lady had not inspired any desire to become better acquainted. Curiosity might be her besetting sin, but she simply didn’t much care what her ladyship’s troubles were.
“Mr. Pritchard,” Julia greeted him gaily, “how could you play such a trick on us? If my mother had come, she’d have been startled out of her wits.”
“No she wouldn’t. I consulted Lady Beaufort first. I wanted to be sure she had no objection. Besides, she has too many wits ever to be startled out of them.” He patted Armitage’s shoulder. “How do you like my hermit?”
“He’s quite the best hermit I’ve ever seen,” said Daisy.
“The only one, I expect,” he said, laughing.
“Unless you count hermit crabs. They’d have a wonderful time in here with all the shells.” She glanced about. In his shell-walled sanctuary, St. Vincent dwelt among Oceanids, Nereids, and Naiads, all scantily draped.
“Do tell,” said Lucy, “is the hermit’s lair decorated in the same style? Mr. Armitage says you’ve provided living quarters here in the grotto.”
“No, creosote to keep the place dry, and plain white distemper. You can have too much of a good thing. Would you like to see it?”
Lucy started to deny any desire to do so, but Daisy forestalled her. “Yes, please. I doubt I’ll use it for the follies book, but I’ve been meaning to ask if you’d mind if I wrote a magazine article about Appsworth … ?”
“As well? Delighted. I’m sure Armitage’ll be able to help you with family history, the way he’s been poring over all those fusty old papers the Appsworths left behind.”
Armitage muttered something, looking as if he could think of approximately fifty-thousand ways he’d rather spend his time. He dug his pipe-and-tobacco pouch out of the depths of his robe and started stuffing the fragrant shreds into the bowl.
“Did you light the gas in the back room?” Pritchard asked him.
“Yes, sir. Both the lights and the fire.”
“Good, good. This way, anyone who’d like to come.”
As Julia took Pritchard’s arm and moved towards the next arch, Daisy hung back and said to the Canadian, “I don’t want to bother you if you’d rather not.”