A Tall Dark Stranger (14 page)

We continued home. Lollie entered the stable and I headed for the back door, which we had left unlocked for easy entry. My shoes made no sound on the soft earth as I hastened through the shadows to the dark doorway. A potpourri of aromatic scents wafted by as I hastened past the herb garden. The kitchen window glinted eerily in the mist. I was nervous, peering around, listening.

If I had not been paying attention, I wouldn’t have heard the softly chiding whispers, the rustle of movement as someone brushed against the lilacs that grow outside the kitchen window. I drew myself against the wall and peered through the fog. It was two people; I could see that much. It looked like a large man and a small one. My heart hammered in my throat as I stood, listening. Their voices were pitched too low for me to recognize or hear any actual words. If they turned around they’d see me and I felt not the slightest doubt that they’d shoot me. However, they were busy arguing and didn’t notice me.

As they disappeared into the blackness beyond the house, I overcame the temptation to run inside and lock the door. I had to let Lollie know that someone was close by. I picked up the spade that the gardener usually left at the back door, handy for the home garden, and ran as fast as my legs could carry me to the barn, ready to use the spade if accosted.

Lollie was just coming out, mounted on his bay mare.

“There was someone at our house, two people coming around the corner as I went toward the house!” I told him. “They went that way.” I pointed to the left, toward the water meadow.

“Were they on foot?” he asked. “Did you recognize them?”

“They were on foot. It was two men, a big one and a smaller one.”

Even as we spoke, we heard the unmistakable whinny of a horse in the distance. “They have horses waiting!” Lollie exclaimed, and was after them.

I waited for fifteen minutes just inside the stable door. We had a mare about to foal and one of the stablehands was there, so I felt safe enough. In a quarter of an hour Lollie was back, scowling in frustration.

“They got away,” he said.

“Which way did they go?” If the larger man had been Renshaw, I figured he’d circle back to Beauvert. They had been heading in the opposite direction.

“Toward Maitland’s place.”

“Maitland’s!”

“They rode right past it, but they knew I was after them. It might have been a trick to con me. I lost them in the fog. The bigger man could have been Maitland.”

“And Maitland is planning to buy Chalmers’s farm!” I exclaimed.

‘There was some talk of it after dinner,” Lollie said.

I felt such a relief to be able to point the blame away from Renshaw. Maitland had been my hero forever, yet I threw him to the wolves without a qualm, did it happily, if only it could make Renshaw innocent. That was when I admitted to myself that I cared for Renshaw more than was wise. I was eager to snatch at any thread that might make him innocent.

“Maitland don’t ride a black nag, though,” Lollie said a moment later. “That new bay of his has a white blaze and white stockings on her forelegs. This was a black nag, or dark all over anyhow. Like Beau’s mount and Renshaw’s. Mind you, Maitland might have muddied up the white markings to prevent the nag being recognized.”

“There are plenty of other dark horses in the neighborhood as well. Murray has that black gelding. What was the other nag like, the one the smaller man was riding?”

“It was ahead. I couldn’t get a good look at it in the fog. You didn’t recognize the intruders?”

“No, but they seemed to be arguing.”

I daresay it was the word
intruders
that gave us both the same notion at the same time.

“What were they doing here at Oakbay?” I asked.

Lollie was already dismounting. He slapped his mount’s rump and sent it to the stable, where the waiting groom would take care of it. “Let’s see if we can find out.”

We made a tour of the house, first outside, to ensure that no doors or windows had been forced open. Then we went and checked within, room by room. Nothing had been touched.

“Perhaps they were just taking a shortcut,” Lollie said.

“But a shortcut from where? It’s no shortcut to go through Oakbay from the main road and then on to town. In fact, it’s longer.”

“We’ll have a closer look in the morning,” he said.

The government agent was tired, cold, wet, and ready for bed. His sister was in the same state, with the added misery of knowing that Renshaw’s mount was similar to the one our intruder had been riding and that his mount was not in the stable at Beauvert.

“What I can’t figure out is who the little fellow was,” Lollie said. Truth to tell, I had forgotten the second man, the smaller one. “He could be Renshaw’s valet or groom. He drives that curricle. The ton often have a small groom for their curricles. Tigers, they call them.”

“Renshaw always drives his own curricle.”

“That’s not to say he don’t have a tiger. From his jackets and rattler and prads, I’d say he is up to all the rigs.”

I made cocoa to warm us, and as soon as it was done, we went up to our beds. It was not until the next morning that we discovered what the intruders had been up to.

It was Inez who made the discovery. She told George, who told Cook, who told the butler, who brought Inez to us as we were at breakfast. Lentle, the butler, is a wizened man with a few ribbons of hair stretched across his scalp and dreadfully bowed legs that give his walk an awkward gait. He has been with us for sixty of his seventy years, beginning in the home garden and gradually working his way upward to the front door.

“I have bad news, sir,” he said to Lollie, who was the official head of the family. “We’ve been broken in.”

Lollie looked almost pleased at this development. “The devil you say! What ... where ...”

“The cellar door, sir. The one we never use. Inez noticed it when she was cutting some lilacs for Cook for the kitchen.”

Without waiting to hear Inez’s story—and I could see by her staring eyes that she was on thorns to tell it— Lollie rose and darted from the room with his breakfast in his throat. Lentle looked uncertainly at us, then said to Inez, “Tell your mistress, Inez,” and he turned and waddled after his master.

Inez began her tale to Auntie and myself. “I never would’ve noticed a thing amiss, for the door was closed, like, and not a sign o’ mischief till I stumbled over a stone whilst picking the lilacs and landed with a bang against that door. I felt a sharp sting. Look at this!”

She held out her hand, where a minute dot of blood in what Auntie calls the Venus mount, and the rest of us call the base of the thumb on the palm side, was the only unusual feature.

“That was a splinter, that was. Cook took it out for me. When it stuck into my hand, I looked close at the door, for if it was a rusty nail that got me, I’d have died for sure. That’s when I saw it,” Inez announced triumphantly.

“Saw what?” Auntie demanded, frothing with impatience at this roundabout way of telling a story.

“The bit o’ splintered wood, all fresh and new, there by the lock, the little square of metal that holds on the loop the padlock fits into.”

“Yes, I see what you mean,” Auntie said.

“As soon as ever I touched that lock, it pulled away from the door. The loop thing had been pried off and set back into place against the door frame with the lock still in it.”

I could no longer contain myself. I rose and went after Lollie while Inez continued her tale to an ever-diminishing audience. My brother was still examining the door when I arrived. The padlock was in just the state Inez had described. The metal plate holding the little loop onto the door had been pried off with the padlock still in it. When rammed back into place, one would never guess it had been tampered with.

We couldn’t find the tool used to break in. Its absence suggested to the agent that the intruder had brought it with him and taken it away. The cellar door is set back into the ancient stone and painted black. During our investigation in the fog the night before, neither Lollie nor I had noticed the break-in.

He opened the door and I went in behind him, with Lentle following me. The outer door leads to a low cellar under part of the original Tudor house. The root cellar and wine cellar are adjacent to it, under the newer part of the house.

“There’s not much they could steal from here,” Lollie said, looking around.

The space we stood in is used for storing wood and coal. I examined the woodpile and coal bin. Both were full almost to overflowing. A mountain of coal reached nearly to the ceiling and the woodpile stretched from wall to wall, so I deduced that the man who broke in hadn’t been after fuel.

Lollie soon returned to investigate the wine cellar. There, too, all was as it should be. Neat rows of bottles sat in their accustomed racks, gathering a coat of dust. Lentle looked them over closely and assured us they had not been disturbed.

“It must have been a tramp looking for a dry bed out of the fog,” Lentle suggested. “I’ll have the lock mended. I believe George can handle it.” George has many talents. “No need to send to the village for a locksmith. The lock is still good. A little carpentry is all that’s required.”

“Yes, you do that, Lentle,” Lollie said.

Lentle went off at as brisk a pace as his seventy years and deformed legs allowed. Lollie turned his narrowed eyes on me.

“It was no tramp,” he said. “It was those fellows you saw, the ones who rode off toward Chilton Abbas.”

“Will you send for Monger? It doesn’t look as if they’ve taken anything.”

“I believe I’ll report it all the same. Best to have it on record, you know.” I doubt Monger kept records, but Lollie was enjoying himself so much, I didn’t talk him out of it.

He held his lamp aloft, peering in over the wall of the coal bin. “What is that!” he exclaimed. “Good God, it looks like a body! Hold the lamp for me while I clamber up the coal pile, Amy.”

I did as he asked, holding my breath in horror while Lollie scaled the coal mountain, sending a coal slide down to rattle against the three-foot wall. A few lumps of coal fell out onto the floor. Another body, this one in our own house! Who could it be? My first fear that it was Renshaw was soon laid to rest. The outer garments were rough and grayish, not a gentleman’s clothing.

“It’s the government property!” Lollie called down. His voice, coming from the enclosed coal bin, echoed hollowly in the small space. Even as he spoke, I heard a loud rattle as the coal mountain gave out under him, sending him down in another landslide of coal, clutching a bag of government property in either hand. The same two bags that had been in the shepherd’s hut.

Lollie picked himself up from the sea of coal and clambered out of the coal bin. He wore a coat of coal dust from head to toe and a smile from ear to ear.

“They weren’t taking anything last night. They were hiding the blunt here!” he exclaimed. “By the living jingo! Never mind Monger. Send George for McAdam at once! What a pair of clunches they were. They needn’t have broken the lock. They could have tossed these bags down the coal chute and no one would have been any the wiser. This points to Renshaw right enough,” he added. “Maitland knew about the coal chute. Beau as well. All the locals know about it. It was a nine days’ wonder when Mama had it put in.”

This was true, and I felt the weight back on my heart. Lollie refused to leave the cellar. He stayed there guarding the loot with the coal shovel while I darted inside to send George off for McAdam and of course to tell Aunt Talbot what was afoot. George already had a hammer in his hand to attend to the lock. He really is a wonder.

Auntie turned bone-white and began to fan herself with her serviette. “Well, upon my word!” she said weakly. “What next? Between murderers and thieves and robbers we’re not safe in our beds! Every path has a puddle, folks say; this one is more like a pond.”

Inez, who was still with her, ran shrieking to the kitchen to warn Cook and Betty. While pandemonium reigned, the doorknocker sounded and Lentle hobbled in to announce, “Mr. and Mrs. Murray, madam.”

“I couldn’t possibly do a reading this morning, I’m much too upset!” Auntie said.

“Mr. Murray is here as well,” Lentle said gently. Mr. Murray did not usually honor us with his august pomposity.

“Oh, in that case, show them into the saloon, Lentle, and offer them wine. Or tea, perhaps, at this hour. Very early for a morning call,” she said, glancing at the head-and-shoulders clock on top of the cabinet. It was only nine-thirty.

“Perhaps it has something to do with the theft and murder,” I said weakly. Had Murray had Renshaw followed last night and had that person seen him come here? Had he come to retrieve the stolen property from the cellar?

“Glory be to goodness, we mustn’t let him know the money is on the premises!” she exclaimed. “Tell Lollie to hide it, Amy. Bury it under the coal pile.”

“We’ve already sent for McAdam.”

“Then we shan’t mention it to the Murrays,” she said.

I don’t know what was in her mind. I expect she was so confused, she hardly knew what to think, and she wanted to protect us from any more involvement than necessary. I daresay it would be difficult to prove Lollie hadn’t put the blunt there himself.

“Yes, that might be best,” I said.

I was confused, too, but it wasn’t confusion that led me to agree so readily. Murray knew that Renshaw was involved. McAdam didn’t. If we could let McAdam handle the matter, Renshaw might be kept out of it. He didn’t deserve such consideration, but I couldn’t bear to think of him being led off in manacles. I would tell him the money was discovered and give him the opportunity to escape back to India and, I hoped, to lead a better life in the future.

We straightened our gowns, tidied our hair, and went to the saloon to greet the Murrays. Mrs. Murray had Fifi with her, cradled in her arms as if the dog were a baby. Fifi’s hair was held off her face with a bright red ribbon on this occasion. I must say she was a well-behaved pooch. She never uttered a sound all the time she was there, perhaps because Mrs. Murray kept stroking her neck.