Death in the Castle Read Online Free PDF Page B

sneeze.
    Lady Mary appealed prettily to John Blayne. “Oh dear, these old castles are damp, you know, Mr. Blayne. I hope you’ll be prepared. I hope you aren’t thinking of central heating and all that—bad for paintings, I’m sure. We’ve never considered it for ourselves, in spite of being quite miserably cold sometimes, especially if it’s a gray winter without proper sun.”
    “You are very kind, Lady Mary,” he said gently. He glanced at Kate’s back.
    “So surprising for an American,” Sir Richard was saying, “this love of the past and your wanting an old castle—”
    John Blayne glanced about the hall. He was facing his predicament alone. The four young men had taken his suggestion and removed themselves and the blueprints to the village inn. Kate stood at a window, her back obdurate. He rushed into hasty speech.
    “Surprising, perhaps, Sir Richard, but I inherit my love of art from my mother. She loved old paintings and my father bought them for her—as an indulgence, I’m afraid. He hasn’t the same taste. As it is, they’ve turned out to be his best investment now. I say now, because when my mother began collecting pictures before she died, about fifteen years ago, and it was apparent that I was to be the only child—which has nothing to do with anything, exactly, except that she wanted something to take up her mind when I was sent to Groton—my father thought it was an absurd obsession. But she went ahead and became really a connoisseur of twelfth- and thirteenth-century art which she afterwards extended to include as late as the seventeenth, particularly English.”
    “Interesting,” said Sir Richard.
    “My father adored her, and let her have her way. But when she died and her estate was assessed he was amazed—not to say floored—when our lawyers told him the collection was a very fine one, worth something over a hundred million dollars, and likely to triple that amount in his lifetime. He decided immediately that he would build a vaultlike sort of place in which to store the collection, a sort of private Fort Knox.”
    “Very interesting,” said Sir Richard.
    “But that seemed to me to be nothing short of a crime, because paintings are meant to be seen, you know, and so I protested. I must confess I could never have won against my father, if our lawyers had not had the bright idea of a Foundation.”
    “But, surely,” Lady Mary observed, “the building would have had a foundation in any case.”
    John Blayne stared, then smiled. “No, no, Lady Mary—a ‘foundation’ in America means a fund set aside for a non-profit purpose, a public service of some sort. As our lawyers have pointed out to my father, if he builds a museum which would be open to the public, he will be able to finance it from this Foundation, which would be tax-deductible.”
    Lady Mary turned to Sir Richard. “Do you understand what he’s saying?”
    “Not yet, my dear,” Sir Richard replied. “But I daresay I shall, in time.”
    “Do stay for luncheon with us so we can go on talking, Mr. …” Lady Mary paused.
    “Blayne,” Sir Richard supplied.
    “I’d be delighted,” John Blayne said, smiling down at the pair of them. “I wonder if you know how perfect you are in this setting—it’s a way you English have, I think, of looking as though you’ve built your backgrounds to suit.”
    “They’ve built us, I fear,” Sir Richard said, returning the smile but dimly.
    Kate could bear no more. She turned on them in a fury. “Lady Mary, my dear, and Sir Richard, I assure you, neither of you has the faintest idea—I hadn’t myself until—”
    John Blayne threw her a desperate glance. “Miss Wells, please, I beg you. We have a lot to talk about of course, and I—”
    “You’re very right,” Kate said hotly, “but it had better be said now. Sir Richard, I think you should know you and my lady—”
    John Blayne was suddenly as angry as she. “Really, Miss Wells, this is entirely between Sir