Joan Smith (15 page)

“I too shall be hearing this question,” Pierre warned us.

“No, you will wait for me here,” he was told, and accepted it sulkily, like a child.

I said good-night to Peter, and received a pouting, “Very much not a good night,” in reply. Welland did not even bother stepping outside of the door with me, but stopped a foot from it.

“What was it you wanted?” I asked, feeling the flush stain my cheeks at the closeness of him, and his eyes lingering on my face.

“How did you know where to look for the black box?” he asked.

“I flew up past the window and peeked in,” I answered angrily. I assure you that was not the question I hoped for.

“Part bird, or part witch? You are looking part cat, ready to spit, at the moment. I think I have figured it out all by my lonesome. Part Gloria. Take care, or she’ll have you toting Dr. Hill across the park. I read the outline. But
when
did Gloria make the ascent?”

“The night you took off all your clothes, Mr. Sinclair. What shocking things the ladies of England will be reading soon, if Loo decides to use all my observations. Good night, sir.” I made a curtsy and let myself out.

“Very much not a good night to you, Miss Ford,” he called out after me, laughing. “Better lock your door,” he added as I set my foot on the stairs.

I did just that, and was soon sleeping like a baby. I have no idea how long the gentlemen remained below drinking, nor what plans were made for the disposition of my body. I knew pretty well which one of the cousins I meant to have though.

I was anxious to escape my French suitor in the morning. To this end, I asked Pinny to bring me breakfast to my room, and tell Pierre, if he inquired, that I was sleeping in late. When she brought the tray up, there was a very satisfying note on it from Welland. “Dear Heart: A thousand apologies for last night. I must see you as soon as possible,
alone.
Meet me in the feather room when you can evade our French cousin. I prefer to search for secret passages in English, and while Loo is composing. May I please have my gun and keys back? I promise to behave, if you don’t tempt me past resisting.” It was signed, “the Parasite,” I was happy to see my jibe had not run off his back, as I feared.

Any self-respecting man must be ashamed of laying himself open to such a charge. I had high hopes he would discover some other career than marrying Mary Milne. Half a dozen had already occurred to me on his behalf.

When I glanced up from reading, Pinny was squinting in horror at the pistol that had been left overnight on the dresser. “Oh, miss, what in the world are you doing with this wicked thing?” she gasped.

“Shooting birds, Pinny. Give it to me, please, and those keys.”

“You got to bed awful late last night, miss,” she admonished gently, handing me the things. “You should have woke me up. I just dozed off, but I meant to do for you, as usual.”

“That is all right. You got my bronze gown?”

“I did, miss, and it smells of the stables. Washing crepe is next to impossible, but I’ll hang it in the sun.”

“Wash it. You have to press it with a flannel cloth on top.”

“I know
that,
miss,” she said, offended. “It hasn’t got no marks, just the smell.”

“Is Welland—Mr. Sinclair downstairs now?”

“Yes, talking to Mr. St. Clair. He’s trying to convince him that nag he lent him needs exercise. I fancy he don’t know it got exercise last night.” This was a hint to discover if I had been out with Pierre the night before. I failed to recognize it, or at least to acknowledge it.

“Let me know at once if St. Clair leaves, will you?”

“Yes, miss. Will there be an answer to the note?”

“That won’t be necessary. Come back in ten minutes and help me with my hair, Pinny. I want to look especially well today.”

“You always look grand, miss. Like a queen. I don’t mean poor old Queen Charlotte either, the quiz. Isn’t it a wonder how the likes of her ever got her body on to a throne?”

“Yes, and our next promises to be even worse, but we must remember we have a farmer for a king, and he would not want too stylish a lady.”

I sipped my chocolate, devoured two eggs and gammon, demolished the couple of bits of toast and was satisfied. Pinny came in just as I finished. “He’s gone, Mr. St. Clair, muttering off a string of French that was oaths, or I ain’t a Christian. I was looking at the pictures in her ladyship’s magazines last night while I was trying to keep awake, and know just the rig for you. Ringlets, miss.”

“Do be serious, Pinny. Ringlets on
me!
Leave them for the dainty girls. I shall have it brushed back today, with my tortoise shell hair band. I hadn’t time to put it in papers last night.”

When she finished, I asked, “Does it look all right?”

“Perfect, miss. Why are you at pains to look better than usual today? There’s no one belowstairs but Mr. Sinclair, and he won’t see a thing of all your style for them green glasses he wears.”

“Is he wearing
them
again?”

“He can’t see a thing without them. I heard him tell Lady Sinclair so, when first he came.”

He was not wearing them when I joined him in the feather room a few moments later.

“Very elegant. I approve,” he complimented me, looking at the new hairdo. “I got rid of Peter, but he is suspicious, to say the least, that I planned to be kissing his Valerie during his absence. He may come leaping out from behind the door at any moment. We better get busy,”

“It’s in the main saloon.”

“No, I meant we better steal our kiss while we have the privacy.”

“You must be a good boy, Welland, or I’ll take my secret passage and go away,” I cautioned, wagging a finger at him.

He grabbed it and placed a loud smacking kiss on it. “I waited till three at my window for you to come flying in. Gloria was not working last night, I take it?”

“We heroines require our rest, like everyone else.”

“You don’t deserve it. You robbed me of mine.”

“Shall we go and see the panel, or do you have a few more of these ill-considered bits of nonsense to relieve yourself of?”

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”

We went to the saloon. The passage, its entrance, length, and eventual debouchement in Auntie’s closet I have already described to you. It had not changed. “This is not it,” was Welland’s opinion, when we stood back in the saloon. “It’s got to be the feather room. There must be another passage there. I have been measuring the outer walls against the inner, by eye only, and believe there is room for one behind the east wall.”

He was one of those impossible people who resort to reason and science to make discoveries. “I have checked that room where Mr. Franconi hid, but found nothing.”

“We shall see. We know where to look now, and if not behind the wall, then he was up above the ceiling. That ghost did not dance across the room without human help.”

“It was dark. I was wondering if he was not dressed up in feathers, like a rooster.”

He did not dignify this suggestion with a denial, but only shook his head sadly to see so little sign of wits in me. We went to the feather room again.

“What a gross of grouse have given their all to create this monstrosity,” he declared, looking about at the bizarre wall covering.

“It is rather sweet. So original.” Actually it was hideous.

“I sincerely hope it may be unique.
I
have never seen another like it, and I have been in a good many of the finer homes in the land. We have one wall done in alligator hide at Tanglewood that is usually considered the ugliest room in England. This gives it stiff competition.”

“You live right in the same house with St. Regis, do you?”

While I had been rearranging his future, it occurred to me he might have a separate establishment, something in the nature of a dower house.

“Yes, a part of the family. A favorite relative of his lordship
.
”

“So you mention, frequently. Well, there is obviously nothing here. No fireplace, no wood paneling, no door, except the one into the hallway.”

“That one section there is bedizened with a few peacock feathers. I wonder why.”

“For ornamentation. Pictures would look strange, hung on feathers, unless they were pictures of birds.”

“Shall I pluck you a bonnet?” he offered, walking forward to examine the peacock feathers. “This is where the ghost popped out, remember?”

“It must have been about there. My ladder was against the window, so I could not see the wall actually, but he came from that direction.”

“There has got to be something here,” he said with total conviction. He began feeling the feathers, his two hands flat up against them, pushing lightly up and down. A feather became dislodged and fluttered to the floor.

“Not so hard. You are destroying the decor.”

“You could
help,
you know, instead of standing there smirking.”

“I was taking the opportunity of admiring your shoulders, Welland.”

“Oh, well in that case, don’t bother helping me. Go ahead and admire. Eat your heart out
.
”

I went to help. “It is perfectly obvious there is no panel here. No break in the feathers at all. Smooth as a swallow’s back.”

“When a swallow has folded his wings, it is hard to see just where the body stops and the wings begin. Feathers are a
perfect
means of concealment. I cannot think of any other reason to disfigure the room so. I’ll have them removed when I take over.”

“Auntie mentioned Troy Fenners might be your reward for catering to St. Regis. I daresay he is sick to death of having you underfoot, pulling your forelock and saying, “Yessir,” but I think in deference to Aunt Loo, you might refrain from mentioning your plans for the place. She is not quite at death’s door yet.”

“I am always at pains to conceal our rapacity from her. And about your use of the word
parasite,
Miss Ford, I might just remind you I
work
for St. Regis. I am not quite a barnacle growing on the man.”

“Did I hit a nerve, Welland? What position is it you fill that he chooses your whole life for you?—home, bride, occupation. The lot.”

“Private secretary.”

“Puppet is more like it.”

I am delighted to be able to relate it was I, and not Welland, who found the secret passageway. At least I was swift to grab the success for my own, though I am not positive whether he did not notice his wall coming out before I noticed mine was going in. The way it worked was on a sort of ball-bearing thing stuck into the frame around a wide door that had no knob, no hinges, but pivoted in the central part, one side swinging out, while the other went into the secret panel. I hope I am making this understandable. I am sure there is a technical term for it, but I don’t know what it may be.

There was a large frame built into the wall, and the door set into it, pivoting on ball bearings, one at the top, one at the bottom allowing the panel to revolve. It doesn’t really matter. The pertinent point is we had found the panel, and behind it we found a lantern, and length of fine rope. The ghost of Uncle Edward had been removed, but I was as sure he had been here as I was sure Mr. Franconi had been pulling the strings.

“What did I tell you?” Sinclair crowed, as though
he
were the one who had found it. “There must be some hooks in the wall on the other side of the room. Those strings were hooked through metal eyes, like a pulley clothesline, you know. Black rope, you will notice, to be invisible during our candle-lit séance. Very neat. I wonder how he held the lantern up. Must have been hooked on to the top rope somehow. Does this passage go anywhere, I wonder?”

It was the length of the room, and about a yard wide. That was it. It was not painted green, not painted at all. “Priest’s hole maybe,” Sinclair thought. “I wonder how the Franconis discovered it. They may have got a look at Sir Edward’s portrait in the gallery easily enough. Mr. Franconi roams freely during the séances, but your aunt did not even know this was here. She never mentioned it, did she?”

“No, she doesn’t know about it.”

“Funny.
Somebody
in the place does. An old family retainer might know. Did you get around to looking at the family records yet?”

“I haven’t had time. Aunt Loo works in the scriptorium all morning.”

“Do it this afternoon, as early as you can.”

“I am not your servant. Don’t order me around as though I were.”

“Are you not interested in cleaning up this mess?”

“Of course I am, but I’m not taking orders from
you.
One would hardly guess you are accustomed to taking commands yourself, you give them so freely.”

“Pretty please and thank you, my dear Miss Ford, if it is convenient for you at some future time, and completely at your leisure, will you be so kind as to cast an eye over the family records, and see if you can find anyone from Blaxhall, or thereabouts, in Suffolk.”

“Possibly, if I find time.” I was tired with his pretending to be in charge of everything when I was the one who found the passage.

“Do you know, I think there’s a trapdoor in the ceiling of this passage?” he said suddenly. During his playful request for help, you see, he had not even bothered to look at me, in my new hairdo, but was craning his neck back to look above him. “Get a candle. It’s too dark to see.”

“Get it yourself, at your leisure, when and if you feel like it, my dear Mr. Sinclair,” I suggested. Then I nipped smartly out of the passage and pushed the panel closed on him. I leaned against the wall, which had quite the opposite result from what I intended. It sent me sailing inward, while the other side opened up, instead of barring Sinclair within.

“Thank you. You are extremely helpful,” he said, with a curt bow, before he turned to go out the door in search of a light.

“There is one on the table, stupid,” I was happy to remind him.

His nostrils were beginning to dilate by the time he got back with the candle and tinderbox, both from the séance table. He lit the taper and held it up above his head to try to decide whether it was a trapdoor he looked at. “Can’t tell. It looks like it. I’ll lift you up.”