Delsie (17 page)

“He’s your brother-in-law! Don’t make it sound as though
I
am so closely mixed up in it. I suppose it
might
come out what he was after, but I don’t mean to stay on here in a house where burglars are free to come and go as they please.”

“You are wishing yourself safely back in Miss Frisk’s garret, I collect? Don’t you think it would be better to change the locks, and take your chances?”

Her bosom swelled in indignation. “It has been clear from the outset that
you
place no store in my safety or comfort, or you would never have made me marry this villain of an Andrew in the first place. But I should think you would show some concern for your own niece!”

“I am concerned for the safety and comfort of you both. If I thought there were the least real danger, you may be sure I would not permit you to stay on here.”

“Permit
me? I shall stay if I want to!”

“Oh, very well, then, stay, but I
do
think you ought to get the locks changed.”

“Oh!” She stamped her foot in vexation at this subtle trap.

“You should really try to control your temper, ma’am. It cannot be good for your heart for you to be so easily vexed. Shall I send a man from the Hall to attend to the locks? I have an excellent chap who does that sort of repair work for myself and the Dower House.”

“Very well,” she sighed in resignation. “I have no doubt that when Roberta and myself are lying on a cold slab, your repairman will also construct a superb set of coffins for us. I would like my daughter’s to be painted white. A plain pine box will do for myself.”

“It would be more fitting to paint it black, as a token of your widowhood,” he suggested piously.

“You would choose a royal purple for yourself, I suppose?”

“I am rather fond of mahogany, varnished. Bear it in mind when I am being laid to rest.”

“Your sort lives forever,” she said, arising in agitation to stalk about the room. “There is one good thing anyway—I got the money before Samson got to it.”

“Possession of the stolen goods is considered
an
advantage now, is it?” he asked, following her perambulations with his eyes.

“I see no advantage in letting another crook have it. What happened to honor among thieves, I wonder?” Suddenly she stopped walking and returned to the sofa. “DeVigne, I have just had an idea! The man outside last night—it was Samson, trying to get in and go over Andrew’s room while we were all asleep. How fortunate I prevented it.”

“I am curious to hear more about last night. I had the idea you did not tell the whole. How did you
prevent
his entering, when you did no more than peer out a window?”

She felt a flush suffuse her face, and looked quickly away. “Actually I—I went to the door—opened it. That’s all.”

“Why do you find that a matter for blushing?” he pressed on, observing her with a peculiar, knowing smile. “Come, tell me the whole. You went out, didn’t you, when I most particularly cautioned you not to?”

“I took a step outside,” she admitted.

“Foolhardy in the extreme. Don’t stop now. You stepped outside, and...”

“Well, if you must know, he kissed me.”

“How did you enjoy being kissed by a larcenous valet?” he inquired politely. No anger, no
concern
at her danger!

“It was not quite so bad as I had thought! There, now I hope you are satisfied.”

“If you are, I have not a word to say against it.”

She sniffed, and changed the subject at once. “I mean to ransack this place from attic to kitchen tomorrow, and I hope you will go through the cellars, as you promised you would do today.”

“I hadn’t realized it was a vow. No Bible was brought forth for me to lay my hand on. Come now, confess you are only angry because you have a devil of a job of cleaning up on your hands. Your life was never in any danger whatsoever, and the intruder did not get the money, so where is the harm? Why, you even got a kiss out of it! I will have the locks changed tomorrow, and you will not be bothered by Samson again.”

“Next you will be telling me I am fortunate to have been burgled at all.”

“A little excitement and adventure are the very things to distract your mind from this melancholy that seems constitutional with you,” he returned reasonably.

“I cannot think burglary is the diversion a doctor would recommend.”

“Very true, but there are so few diversions one can recommend to a widow without offending the proprieties. I daresay even a hand of cards on the Sabbath is not quite the thing. Shall we settle for my poor conversation after all?”

“No, I mean to begin the search tonight, but I shan’t inconvenience you by asking your help.” She arose and began peering under chairs, sofas, tables, and into vases for the canvas bags. After regarding her in amusement for some moments, deVigne shrugged his shoulders and joined in, investigating such unlikely spots as under lace doilies, candle holders, and in the coal scuttle.

“It is not dust and dirt we are looking for, but bags of gold,” she pointed out.

There were few places of concealment in the saloon, and they were soon searched, after which they went to the dining room for a similar treasure hunt. Nothing of the least interest was discovered. They settled for conversation, enriched in the gentleman’s case by a glass of brandy. Before taking his leave, he reminded her to lock the door.

“Much good it will do me!”

“True, but you would look a fool if you were robbed and had to admit you’d left your doors standing on the latch.”

“I shall have the great satisfaction in the morning, when I find the study vault standing open and the money gone, of knowing I did my poor best.”

“Put the money in the bank. It is foolish to leave temptation unguarded. I should have thought you learned that lesson last night, with Mr. Samson in the garden.”

Chapter Thirteen

The widow passed a night undisturbed by any actual occurrence of a physical nature, but somewhat ruffled by the awareness of a burglar possessing a key, bent on breaking into her house. She expected to see her two ex-students bright and early in the morning, for she had asked in her note that they come at eight-thirty. At nine-thirty, there was still no sign of them, and at ten o’clock two squares of folded paper were given to her hand by Mrs. Bristcombe, just as deVigne came to the door with a man to change the locks. She opened them in his presence. She was shocked and dismayed at the two identical messages.

“My girls are not coming to me!” she exclaimed, frowning.

“Neither of them has accepted? That is strange, with work in such short supply in the village,” he replied.

“I made sure I was doing them a favor. Their families are not well off, and I offered them fifty pounds each, but only see what they have to say: ‘Under the circumstances, my parents do not feel they can allow me to come.’ Word for word—they have worked this answer out together. What can it mean? It must refer to Mr. Grayshott, but it is well known by now that he is dead. Is it that they object to working for me, their former teacher? Is that the feeling in the village, that I am not fit to be mistress of this establishment?” she asked her caller.

“Certainly not. Whatever it may mean, it cannot be
that.
Is there any use making the offer to a different set of girls? You must know many from your work.”

“No, these two were the likeliest—good, reliable girls, with whom I got on particularly well. They liked me, admired me. If they refuse, no one else will accept,” she told him, defeated. She was a little angry as well, for while they had refused
her,
she had an inkling that if the offer had come from deVigne, it would have been accepted fast enough.

“It is a pity, b
ut I can spare you a couple for the time being. I’ll have my housekeeper send down two. Come, don’t despair, cousin. I’ll speak to Mrs. Forrester as soon as I get back to the Hall. I’ll go to the cellars now, and you continue with the search abovestairs. We’ve done this floor. It will be easier for you to examine the spare bedrooms without a couple of servants at your elbow for instructions every ten minutes. It is always so the first day.”

She accepted this small crumb of good from her disappointment, and went to check the spare bedrooms and later the attic, without finding a thing but dust, dirt, and one bent penny. DeVigne, returning to the saloon an hour later, with cobwebs clinging to his head and shoulders of his jacket, had the same non-news to impart. No canvas bags were found in the cellars.

“I was happy to see the state of the cellars, though,” he continued. “A vast deal of good wine set by, and two whole hogsheads of brandy untapped.”

“The brandy was to be your payment for the search,” she reminded him. “Only fancy his having such a quantity of it—two hogsheads.”

“I am wel
l paid for my hour’s work, but you are not completely unrewarded either. You will no longer be reduced to wrinkling your nose in distaste while I sip brandy. There are shelves of excellent claret and Bordeaux wine there, and a couple of cases of sherry. I took the liberty of bringing up some sherry for you. Bristcombe is cleaning a bottle now.”

In a few moments, Bristcombe brought in the sherry, and the widow tasted it, proclaiming, on very limited experience, that it was unexceptionable.

“So it seems we have discovered the last of the bags of gold,” deVigne said, settling back on the settee. “Only twenty-five hundred guineas—hardly a sum to get excited over.” Mrs. Grayshott looked her disagreement with this speech. “I wonder where it came from.”

“I hope I never find out,” she replied with great feeling and proceeded to enumerate aloud various possible sources, each more criminal than the preceding.

“All that brandy he had below makes me wonder whether smuggling was not the source of the money,” deVigne mentioned, when her imagination had petered out. “Living here on the ocean’s doorstep, and with Andrew’s marine connections from the shipyards, it would have been easy enough for him to arrange it. He might have financed the importing and not taken an actual hand in the shipping, for he was no sailor. He was certainly in touch with the smugglers. Besides the two full hogsheads, there is one empty.”

“What a pair of dullards we are!” she agreed at once. “Of course that is what he was up to! Every circumstance points to it: his knowing the sailors hereabouts, our location, not half a mile from the ocean, his own propensity for brandy. It is clear as the nose on your face. The bags of guineas are the payment for the various shipments he had brought in. It is just as Sir Harold said—he was involved in an illegal business, and here am I, sitting with a cellarfull of smuggled brandy and a houseful of illegal money. This is the busiest season for it too—winter coming on, and no moon to speak of. They do the smuggling on moonless nights, do they not?”

“I believe so, to avoid the revenue men. It would account for the village girls not wanting to come to you, if this business is whispered of in the village.”

“Certainly that is it! I chose girls from the most respectable families I could think of, the very ones who
would
object, for half the village is in on it, of course. Well, at least we know the worst now.”

“We
know
nothing, though it seems a plausible conjecture,” deVigne revised.

“And the pixies in the orchard!” Delsie shrieked, then covered her mouth with her fingers as she realized the loudness of her voice. She tiptoed to the door and closed it quietly before returning to the sofa, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “The noises I heard in the orchard—it must have been the smugglers bringing the brandy into the orchard. I heard a horse or horses, or more likely donkeys, and men speaking in low voices. They were hiding brandy in the orchard!”

“You checked the orchard the next morning, did you not? You found nothing amiss there.”

“How can you say so? I found the bag of gold. The smugglers must leave Andrew’s share of the profit there for him to pick up.”

“Seems an odd place to leave it, but, as you found no brandy there, they cannot have been delivering it. They were removing it. It was stored nearby, hidden somewhere presumably.”

“Well then, removing it instead of delivering. It must certainly have been smugglers in any case. I am convinced of it.”

“You are convinced on very little evidence,” deVigne suggested.

“Every detail points to it. The bags of money—so many of them and all in the same form—payment for the various shipments. The noises in the orchard, the girls not coming to me, the brandy in the cellar, Andrew’s connection with the shipyards.”

“I grant y
ou it sounds likely, and I hope you may be right.”

She stared. “You hope my husband was a smuggler? Thank you very much. It is an admirable addition to his other sterling qualities—his drunkenness, his insolvency, his dying within hours of my marrying him.”

“Don’t pr
etend you object to that last item!” he quizzed. “But I had a reason for hoping we have solved this mystery. If that was it, the business is finished. With Andrew dead, someone else will take it over, and you shan’t be bothered again. You have heard the last of the pixies in the garden. The lot delivered the night you moved to the Cottage must have been the one in progress when he died. It would take a few days, I suppose, for a ship to go to France and return, and wait its chance to unload safely. The shipment was already begun, and it was completed the night you arrived. The bag of money you found in the orchard was Andrew’s share of the profit.”

“I won’t keep money obtained in such a way.”

“Devote it to your favorite charity—underpaid schoolteachers,” he suggested.

“On the theory that charity begins at home, you are implying I ought to keep it?” He nodded his head. “I shan’t keep a penny.”

“I am less scrupulous. I intend to enjoy every drop of the illicit stuff you so kindly give me. Shall we have a look around the orchard and see if we can find where they have been hiding it? If we discover some sign, we can take it for confirmation that this web of suppositions we have been fabricating is true.”