Emma touched the old man’s arm and shook her head. “I don’t think Derek would approve of the children going in there so soon after the accident,” she said.
“May be you’re right,” Bantry acknowledged equably, “but you could fill a barn with what Mr. Derek don’t know about young ‘uns.” He bit into his celery stalk and chewed for a moment before adding decisively, “Won’t do ’em a bit o’ harm to go in there. Best for ’em to face it fair and square, or the bogeyman’ll move in and they won’t want to face it at all.”
Peter and Nell were waiting expectantly on the steps of the wrought-iron arbor. Nell and Bertie had exchanged sailor outfits for matching cherry-red sweaters and scaled-down bib overalls. Peter still wore his white polo shirt, but had traded his short pants for a pair of neatly creased khaki trousers. Bantry beckoned to them to follow as he and Emma crossed the banquet hall, and the four of them entered the grassy corridor together.
An unanticipated flutter of dread ran through Emma as they drew closer to the green door, and the children, who’d been talking quietly as they walked, fell silent. Bantry must have sensed their rising unease because, when they reached the door, he turned to address the children. Bending down, his hands braced upon his knees, he said, “You both know about Miss Susannah bumping her head this morning, right? Well, now, I’m not goin’ to lie to you. There might very well be a splash o’ blood or two where she fell, but there’s no need—”
“Like when the lions tore the Christians limb from limb,” Nell put in with a knowing nod. “Or when Lancelot stabbed the Black Knight to the heart.”
“Or when Professor Moriarty smashed on the rocks at the Reichenbach Falls,” Peter added thoughtfully, but Nell objected that the water had probably washed that blood away, so it didn’t really count.
“What about when Duncan Robards knocked his tooth out at football?” Peter proposed. “He was bleeding all over the place.”
Bantry gave Emma a sidelong look and stood upright, muttering, “Don’t know why I bother....”
Bantry pulled the green door open, and for a moment they stood together, peering down at the grassy space at the bottom of the stairs. The oilcloth had been removed and a pair of stout planks had been placed on the stairs—a ramp for the wheeled stretcher, Emma thought. But the main focus of her attention, the damp grass near the tool-filled wheelbarrow, where Susannah’s battered head had lain, had been obliterated by the passage of many feet.
Nell turned a reproachful eye on Bantry. “No blood,” she said, somewhat testily.
“Wait,” said Peter. He leaned forward slightly, then ran down the planks to point triumphantly at a dark stain on the handle of the grub hoe.
“Let me see.” Nell shouldered her way between Bantry and Emma and joined Peter beside the wheelbarrow. Brother and sister bent low over the. stain, discussing it with an almost clinical detachment.
“She must’ve whacked her head on the hoe when she fell,” Peter reasoned, and Nell nodded.
“That’s as may be,” Bantry said, walking briskly down the planks, “but we’ll be whackin’ weeds with it.” He picked up the grub hoe and the scythe and carried them over to the chapel.
“What are you doing, Mr. Bantry?” asked Peter.
“Movin’ the tools into the chapel,” Bantry explained. “Remember the rain we had last night? Might come back again tonight, and as we’ll be needin’ the barrow, and as I don’t want my tools to get rusty, I’m goin’ to put ’em inside where it’s dry.”
“But Dad won’t want the chapel cluttered up,” Peter objected.
Bantry shifted the load in his arms and looked curiously at Peter’s worried face. “Don’t your father look after his tools?” he asked. “That’s all I’m doin’, son. Your father won’t begrudge us a bit o’ roof. Now, you come over here and see that it’s all stacked tidy.”
“It’s all right, Peter,” said Nell. “Bertie says that Papa won’t mind.”
Peter glanced at his sister and seemed to relax a bit as he strode over to lend Bantry a hand. When the barrow was empty, Bantry looked up at Emma and asked, “Where do you want us to begin?”
The rest of the morning passed quickly. Bantry and Peter stripped dead vines from the walls, Emma turned the soil in the raised beds, and Nell trotted to and fro, carrying armloads of debris to the wheelbarrow, while Bertie sat on an upturned bucket, supervising.
Bantry and Emma took turns wheeling the barrow up the ramp and tipping its contents in a windswept, rocky meadow outside the east wall of the castle. A broad path cut through the meadow, a bright-green ribbon of moss running through the gorse bushes and clumps of tamarisk, and beyond the path the land fell away abruptly, dropping nearly two hundred feet to the foaming waves below.
“The cliff path,” Emma said. She turned to Bantry. “Isn’t that where Peter was this morning?”