Skylark (23 page)

"We could sit in the bar."

"If you will, madam, I'll call you."

I shot a glance over my shoulder. Ann was absorbed in a pamphlet. "Uh..."

"Yes?"

"Is there by any chance a room available?"

He said doubtfully, "There's one left, but the tariff is rather steep. It's meant for a family
group."

"How much?"

He told me. Less than Jay and I had been paying Mrs. Chisholm.

I palmed my Visa card. "We'll take it."

"Very good, madam. For how long?"

"Just tonight."

"Shall I show you the room?"

I said expansively, "That won't be necessary. I'm sure it's very nice."

He whipped out his register, and I signed. Fortunately I had scribbled the car license
number on a bit of paper, so I had the necessary information at my fingertips. He took an
impression of my Visa, which he insisted on calling a Barclaycard, and handed me a large key.
The deed was done.

I tucked the key into my purse and moseyed over to Ann, who was reading brochures
with maniacal concentration. "How about a beer?"

"Okay. This is interesting country. All kinds of stately homes." She snaffled another
brochure and tucked it into her bag. "Lead me to it."

Most of the patrons were standing in the center of the room, drinking beer and shrieking
like peacocks. All of them appeared to know each other. They had been to a race meeting near
Ludlow. While Ann staked out a place on the periphery I fetched two half pints.

I set the beaded glasses on a table the size of the
AA
Atlas
. "Is bitter
okay?"

"Yes." She leaned against the settle, wriggling her shoulders. "My word, I'm tired. I
marvel at your driving, Lark, honey. Why you took those nasty old roundabouts smoother than a
London cabdriver."

I smiled and sipped my beer and let her lay on the compliments. When she wound down
I said, "I saw a signpost for Ludlow at the last roundabout. Thirty miles."

"Yes. We're almost there, thank God."

"What do you propose to do?"

She blinked at me over her beer glass.

"When we reach Hambly."

"Find Milos?" Her voice wavered in that nice southern uncertainty that is half statement,
half question.

"So we just march right up to the front door and ask the lord of the manor if he has a
stray Czech stashed in his back bedroom?"

She reddened. "Well..."

"We ought to think it through."

"I've been trying to think it through since we left Yorkshire," she confessed. "I guess we
need to see Hambly first."

"Case the joint?"

She winced. "Really, Lark."

The desk clerk appeared in the door arch. I caught his eye and nodded. "What we need is
food and logic. Let's try out the dining room."

"But there are hours of daylight left."

There were perhaps two hours of daylight left. I adopted a tone of sweet reason. "We did
skip lunch. We have to eat sometime, Ann, and you know how things are on Sunday." I got to
my feet. "We may not find another restaurant open, and I'm not in the mood for pickled onions. I
need sustenance."

She rose, too, and shouldered her tote. "I guess you're right."

Dinner was very English--soup, good roast lamb with real mint sauce, three kinds of
potatoes, and boiled green cabbage leaking liquid. I ate with deliberation. The dining room filled
with families. Ann and I talked sporadically but didn't advance beyond our need to find
Hambly-the-House. There was bound to be security, I pointed out, if only a handful of family retainers.
Probably, if the Henning Institute folks were in the habit of secreting political refugees on the
premises, there would be guards. Ann's gloom deepened as we ate.

She ordered the trifle. That was too much anglophilia for me. I asked for coffee and the
cheese board, a wise choice. The cheese was ripe and Stilton, and the coffee, had it not been for
whole cream and demerara sugar, would have peeled my tonsils.

Ann ate a last delicate bit of what looked to me like vanilla pudding. Then she glanced
at her watch. "My goodness, it's almost nine!"

"Heavens to Betsy." I sipped coffee.

"It must be dark out."

"Must be."

She stared at me. "You knew the meal would take forever."

I fished in my purse. "Well, yes. What's worse, I rented a room for the night." I held up
the key. "Bed and breakfast. I suggest we retire to our room and map out our strategy."

Her mouth compressed. Our eyes locked. Finally she leaned back in her chair. "I
declare, you're as strong-willed..."

"As a mule in a hurricane?"

"You took the words right out of my mouth."

In deference to fishermen and the commercial travelers who were its mainstay, the
Royal Oak served breakfast early, from seven-thirty to nine. Ann and I had reloaded the car and
were waiting outside the breakfast-room door at seven-thirty.

Our bedroom had been a marvelous jumble of antiques--a wardrobe and dresser--cheap
modern stuff--three beds and a cot--and that bizarre domestic technology the English specialize
in--an electric pants press. Floor levels on the way to the bathroom varied wildly, which
indicated that the place probably did date back to the reign of Charles II, he of the oak tree
hideout.

We stayed up until midnight, planning alternative courses of action, and I went down to
the foyer twice to call Jay at Mrs. Chisholm's. I dialed six times and each time the line was busy.
That worried me. I had left two separate notes describing where we were going and why. Jay
might find it annoying to be stranded in the country without a car, but he could ask Harry
Belknap for a lift or call a taxi from Thirsk. I told myself that over and over until I finally fell
asleep.

The weather had changed slightly the next morning. It was misting out, what the Irish
call 'soft weather.' A chatty salesman who breakfasted at the next table said he thought the sky
would clear by ten. That promised well. Breakfast was gammon and eggs. I kept hoping one day
I'd run into a place that served smoked haddock for breakfast, or kedgeree. However, the
gammon was good gammon. We were on the road before nine.

With a night's rest and a solid breakfast under her belt, Ann's mood had swung. She
hummed to herself as she scanned for our turnoff. A roundabout shot us off on a B road--paved
and well-maintained but rather narrow. Because we were in territory warmed by the Gulf Stream,
everything had leafed out, and flowering shrubs blossomed in the misty fields and gardens.
Spring was farther along than it had been in Yorkshire. By ten the sky had cleared.

The road twisted and rose. There was quite a lot of traffic--and sweat-making blind
corners--so I concentrated hard on the mechanics of driving safely. At a quarter of eleven, we
nosed into the village Ann claimed was closest to Lord Henning's estate. It was tiny, perhaps
twenty houses, a church, one shop with the red Post Office sign affixed, a pub, and an upscale
antique shop. The street had been laid out well before the invention of the automobile. I spotted a
small car park beside the pub, so I turned around at the church and went back, parked the car,
and got out.

Ann extricated herself from the passenger side. "Hambly can't be more than ten miles
from here." Her cheeks were pink with excitement.

"Good. I need to find a phone." I had tried Mrs. Chisholm's number before we left the
Royal Oak and got another busy signal. I was beginning to think there was something wrong
with the line.

"The pub won't open until eleven."

"Maybe there's a pay phone in the post office."

We walked to the shop, but it was closed up tighter than a drum. When I peered through
the window I saw no evidence of a public telephone. The antiques place was also closed but
promised to open at eleven thirty. That left the pub.

We stood by the car, not saying much, until the door to the pub opened. We asked for a
pot of tea and a phone, and the barmaid, her eyes bright with curiosity, pointed down the dank
hallway that led to the restrooms. I tried Mrs. Chisholm's number three more times. The line was
busy. I held my breath against the odor of disinfectant emanating from the loos, and dialed again.
This time a woman answered.

I said carefully, "This is Lark Dodge. May I speak to my husband?"

The woman, it was apparently the cook, asked me to repeat myself, so I did, explaining
that I had stayed there Friday and Saturday nights and that I was anxious to talk with my
husband.

"Oh dear, lass, he's gone, hasn't he? That copper with the red auto drove him to York
this morning early."

"I see," I said, feeling rather blank. "May I speak to Mrs. Chisholm?"

I was given to understand that she was off visiting friends in Thirsk. I thanked the
woman and hung up. I supposed Jay must have decided to leave on an earlier train. We had been
scheduled to return at five. I wondered how early was early. On the off chance the he might
already have reached London, I dialed the flat, but no one answered. I walked back into the
saloon bar of the pub with my feet dragging.

Ann poured me a cup of tea. "That nice woman says Hambly is about five miles down
the road that runs past the church. It's open today, Lark. Isn't that a stroke of luck? She says they
don't open it to the public very often, but there's some kind of stately home tour going on over
the holiday, and Hambly will be open until four or five."

I sat and sugared my tea. I needed energy. "I've been on stately home tours. Everything
will be cordoned off, and there will be a volunteer or a staff member in every major room
watching to make sure nobody snatches the porcelain knick-knacks."

"Don't be negative, Lark."

I sighed. "I'm sorry. Jay checked out early, and I don't know how to reach him. He isn't
at the flat."

"Try again in a couple of hours, honey. He's bound to show up."

"You're probably right, but it is worrying. Ah well, let's go to Hambly and see what we
can see."

We drank our tea and left, pulling out behind a dark sedan that picked up speed as the
village ended. I kept to a more cautious pace, and the sedan disappeared from view.

The road narrowed beyond the church. A stone wall, at head height and in good repair,
followed it on the left--not conducive to trespass. I had set the odometer at zero. When it
registered 5.2, and we still hadn't found Hambly, I began to wonder whether the barmaid had
been fictionalizing. Perhaps the odometer was calibrated in kilometers.

"There's a sign!" Ann leaned forward. "The car park's off there to the right."

I drove into the grassy plot and bumped over uneven turf past dozens of other vehicles
to a spot beneath a large tree. A meadow had been roped off and a piece of generic farm
equipment, quite new, sat idle at one end. Two other cars--they must have come from the
opposite direction--had turned in after us.

A boy in a school blazer and shorts directed them to form a new row. Clearly the
opening of Hambly to public viewing was something of a local event. An enterprising soul had
brought in a mobile canteen. Candy wrappers and soft drink cups littered the grass, and two
port-a-potties already had customers.

Ann had undone her seat belt and was rummaging in the back seat for her purse. "What
a relief there are so many visitors. We can blend in with the others. And with any luck at all there
will be gardens." She opened her door.

"Gardens?" I grabbed my own purse and got out the other side.

"If the gardens are on show we have an excuse to ramble around the grounds." She
fumbled her bag open and took out a coin purse. A crudely lettered sign had indicated a 50p
charge for parking.

We strolled over the grass to the kid who was directing traffic and paid him. He gave us
a polite smile and waved another car into the new row. It was the dark, rather dusty sedan we had
followed from the village. When we had crossed the road and queued up behind a family group
to pay the admission charge, I glanced back. Two men in dark suits, one wearing sunglasses, had
got out of the sedan. They did not look like garden club enthusiasts.

We took our tickets and went on up a graveled drive. Two of the children in the family
ahead of us had already darted off into the shrubbery. The mother was pushing a baby-stroller.
Her husband, casual in jeans and a light jacket, was chatting with an older woman who had
obviously gussied up for the occasion. She was mincing along the gravel in high heels. An older
man called to the children not to muck about in them flowers.

I glanced behind us. A foursome of middle-aged women in neat spring outfits was
following us. The men from the sedan were paying for their tickets, saying something to the
woman in charge.

We passed a clump of evergreens and yellow flowered shrubs and came in view of the
house, perhaps a quarter of a mile off. The drive led down past stone outbuildings and a
greenhouse, dipped toward a small stream, then rose again to a lesser height as it neared
Hambly.

It was a rambling, pleasant house, constructed of what I took to be local stone. The
brochure we were given as we entered indicated that the family had added a neo-classic wing in
the early nineteenth century to a seventeenth century structure. Hambly was large by American
standards but not a swollen palace like Castle Howard. It looked as if a family--and perhaps
twenty servants and as many guests--could have lived in it.

The greenhouse was open for viewing, with an array of potted primroses set out for sale.
We ducked inside. Ann began interrogating the plump, besmocked woman in charge in a manner
that suggested she knew plants. I feel a vague benevolence toward plants, but I do not have a
green thumb, so I stood near the open door and watched the passers-by. The four matrons were
drooping over the potted flowers, and the men from the sedan had gone on toward the house
itself. A large group, probably a coach load, of well-dressed adults swarmed up the drive toward
us. They seemed to be making for the greenhouse, too. I thought we could blend in with them if
the need arose.