The silence, however, was not prolonged. There were footsteps on the stairs and in the gallery, and voices raised excitedly. Then came a hammering on the door of her room and a shouted question from Romilly.
'Beatrice! Beatrice! Are you all right?'
'Perfectly all right,' she replied. 'I thought I heard the sound of a shot, though. Could it be so?'
'Well, I certainly heard something,' said Corin's voice. 'Hullo! Talk about a gathering of the clan!'
There were excited exclamations in various tones. It was clear that most, if not all, of the household, were gathered on the landing outside. Dame Beatrice lit a candle, put on dressing-gown and slippers, hung the picture up again and opened the door.
'Where did the sound seem to come from?' she mildly enquired.
'Certainly from this part of the house,' said Romilly, shading his candle against a draught from the staircase. Dame Beatrice glanced around her. The absentees were the servants and also Binnie, Rosamund and Tancred. The others wore dressing-gowns, except for Giles, who had pulled his trousers on over his pyjamas, and Humphrey, who was wearing an overcoat over his nightshirt.
'It sounded like a shot,' said Romilly, 'but it could hardly have been that. What did you think it was, Beatrice?'
'I thought it was a shot,' she replied. 'But, as you say, it seems unlikely.'
'You don't suppose,' said Giles, 'that Hubert and Willoughby have arrived, and what we heard was their car back-firing?'
'That seems possible,' said Judith, who was looking particularly handsome in a scarlet dressing-gown embroidered with gold thread. 'Perhaps somebody had better go downstairs and find out.'
'An excellent idea,' said Romilly. 'You girls get back to bed, and you, too, Beatrice. Giles and I will investigate.'
The crowd dispersed. Dame Beatrice closed her door and locked it. Then she found the powerful electric torch which always accompanied her and made an inspection of what had become the foot of her bed. She was interested but not surprised to find that the marksman, whoever he or she might have been, had not tailored the shot. As nearly as she could judge, the bullet would have travelled in a direct line to her pillow, had her bedding not been rearranged. She would probably find the bullet embedded in the mattress, she thought. She returned to bed and slept lightly but soundly until six.
At breakfast there was some speculation, but not as much as might have been expected, as to the origin of the noise. Dame Beatrice, who, after rising, had rearranged her bed so that the pillows were at the right end of it, contributed little to the pointless discussion, and it very soon changed to a peevish monologue from Romilly concerning the non-arrival of Hubert and Willoughby. Since she knew neither of them, for her any real interest was lacking. However, as she had found not only the bullet hole in the bedclothes, but the bullet itself (which she decided had come from a .22 rifle), her interest lay in wondering who had fired it, and whether the would-be murderer had expected to kill not herself but Romilly, as the room she occupied had at one time been his own. In view of the fears he had expressed to her, and which, at the time, she had treated lightly, she thought that he might have been the intended victim. It was clear, later in the day, that he himself thought so. He said to her, when they chanced to find themselves alone:
'I suppose it was a shot?'
'Oh, yes,' she replied. 'It was a shot. It came from the direction of the hole in the wall in my room.'
'It was intended for me, no doubt. What a lucky escape you have had.'
'I have no idea for whom it was intended.'
'I should imagine it has substantially reduced the value of the picture.'
'No, no. I had taken the picture down.' He stared at her, but asked for no explanation, and in this unsatisfactory state the matter rested, except that when she next visited her room it was to find that a kind of rough wooden shutter had been affixed to the hole in the wall, and that the painting of the two boys had disappeared.
CHAPTER FIVE
DANSE MACABRE-THE WICKED UNCLE
If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, ill you command me to use my legs? And yet that were light payment-to dance out of your debt.'
King Henry IV, Part 2.
(1)
Laura was delighted with the letter she had received from Dame Beatrice, her emotion tempered merely by regret to think that, so far, she was excluded from the fun. She would have been even more regretful had she known about the mysterious shot in the night. However, leaving the baby Eiladh in the capable and willing hands of Zena the kitchenmaid, she drove to London in her own small car, parked it on the outskirts and took a taxi to Somerset House.
The provisions of Felix Napoleon's will were straightforward enough, and Laura had no difficulty in memorising them. There was no doubt that Rosamund, subject to the conditions of which Dame Beatrice had been made aware, was the principal beneficiary. The money was left to 'my granddaughter, Rosamund Mary Lestrange,' when she should have attained the age of twenty-five years. Until that time, the estate was to be held in trust by the old man's lawyers, and the interest on the money allowed to accumulate. Laura read the rest of the provisions and stipulations with great interest, for there was no doubt that if Romilly was an unscrupulous and criminally-minded man, the girl's fears for her own safety were not imaginary, and Laura admitted as much in her return letter.
Dame Beatrice received this letter at a quarter to ten on the morning following the shooting. There had been some more speculation as to the cause of the noise which had roused the household, but as, apparently, nothing had resulted from the shot except the somewhat curious circumstance that none of the servants seemed to have heard it-a circumstance confirmed by George and Amabel when Dame Beatrice off-handedly mentioned the matter to them separately-speculation died down in favour of a general discussion, when Romilly had left the breakfast table, as to the reason for his having arranged the house-party.
Dame Beatrice, who did not contribute to the discussion, but who listened with interest to it, realised that one thing which she had been told was, on the face of things, completely untrue. There was no family feud between the Lestranges and the Provosts. There was a running skirmish between Humphrey and Tancred, but it was a private fight, not a family matter. She wondered whether the appearance of the brothers Hubert and Willoughby would prove to be the match which might be applied to the gunpowder, but she could not, at that point, detect any presence of explosives. In the early afternoon, however, more drama, this time of a rather ridiculous sort, was suddenly introduced by Rosamund.
Lunch was over. The last two of the guests, Willoughby and Hubert Lestrange, still had not put in an appearance. The others, with Romilly, Judith and Dame Beatrice, were taking coffee in the drawing-room when Rosamund put in this dramatic and disordered appearance. She was wearing a white nylon nightdress and had a cock-eyed wreath of dripping wet hazel-catkins on her hair. She said:
'Look! I'm Ophelia, all wet from the river.' Then, in a tuneless voice, she began to sing.
'My God!' exclaimed Humphrey. 'What on earth is this?'
'And will he not come again?' mouthed Rosamund, continuing her caterwauling.
'Who?' interpolated Binnie, obviously interested.
'No, no he is dead,
Go to thy death-bed,
He never will come again,' sang Rosamund.
'Who won't?' demanded Binnie, in a louder tone.
'So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr,' replied Rosamund obligingly, in a clear, elocutionist voice.
'Beatrice!' cried Romilly, putting down his cup. 'For God's sake help me out with her!' But it was Tancred who rose from his seat on the settee where he was partnering Binnie.