King of the Castle by Victoria Holt Read Free Book Online Page B

young and at times seemed childish for her age. If we could become friends I might be able to help her.
    “I am eager to meet your mother,” I said; she did not answer but ran on ahead of me.
    I followed her through the trees but she was more fleet than I and not so encumbered by her skirts. I lifted mine and ran but I lost sight of her.
    I stood still. The trees were thicker here and I was in a small copse.
    I was not sure which way I had entered it and as I had no idea in which direction Genevieve had gone I felt suddenly lost. It was one of those moments such as I had experienced in the gallery when I had been unable to open the door. A strange feeling as though panic were knocking, gently as yet, on my mind.
    How absurd to feel so in broad daylight! The girl was tricking me. She had not changed. She had deluded me into thinking that she was sorry;
    her conversation had almost amounted to a cry for help and it was all a game, a pretence.
    Then I heard her calling: “Miss! Miss, where are you? This way.”
    “I’m coming,” I said and went in the direction of her voice.
    She appeared among the trees.
    “I thought I’d lost you.” She took my hand as though she feared I would escape from her and we went on until after a short time the trees were less thick and then stopped abruptly. Before us was an open space in which the grasses grew long.
    I saw at once that the monuments erected there were to the dead and guessed we were in the graveyard of the de la Talles.
     
    I understood. Her mother was dead. She was going to show me where she was buried. And she called this introducing me to her mother.
    I felt shocked and a little alarmed. She was indeed a strange girl.
    “All the de la Talles come here when they die,” she said solemnly.
    “But I often come here too.”
    “Your mother is dead?”
    “Come, I’ll show you where she is.”
    She drew me through the long grass to an ornate monument. It was like a small house and on top of it was a beautifully sculptured group of angels holding a large marble book, on which was engraved the name of the person who was buried there.
    “Look,” she said, ‘there’s her name. “
    I looked. The name on the book was Francoise, Comtesse de la Talk, aged thirty years. I looked at the date. It was three years ago.
    So the girl had been eleven years old when her mother died.
    “I come down often,” she said, ‘to be with her. I talk to her. I like it. It’s so quiet. “
    “You shouldn’t come,” I said gently.
    “Not alone.”
    “I like to come alone. But I wanted you to meet her.”
    I don’t know what prompted me to say it but I blurted out: “Does your father come?”
    “He never does. He wouldn’t want to be with her. He didn’t want to before. So why should he now?”
    “How can you know what he would like?”
    “Oh, I do know. Besides, it’s because he wanted her to be here that she’s here now. He always gets what he wants, you know. He didn’t want her.”
    “I don’t think you understand.”
    “Oh, yes, I do.” Her eyes flashed.
    “It’s you who don’t understand. How could you? You’ve only just come. I know he didn’t want her. That was why he murdered her.”
     
    I could find nothing to say. I could only look at the girl in horror.
    But she seemed unaware of me as now she laid her hands lovingly on those marble slabs.
    The stillness all around me; the warmth of the sun; the sight of those mausoleums which housed the bones of long dead de la Talles. It was macabre; it was fantastic. My instincts warned me to get away from the house; but even as I stood there I knew that I would stay if I could and that there was more to fascinate me in Chateau Gaillard than the paintings I loved.
     
    Two
    It was my second day at the Chateau Gaillard. I had not been able to sleep during the night, mainly because the scene in the graveyard had so startled me that I could not get it out of my mind.
    We had walked slowly back to the chateau and I had told