Skylark (27 page)

I knew none of this at the time. I had been sedated to prevent me from thrashing about
and pulling out stitches, so I slept until six o'clock the next morning and woke to find Ann at my
bedside.

"Where's Jay?" I demanded--or rather that was my intention. What came out was a
blurred moan.

Ann rang for the ward sister and took my right hand.

"Where's Jay?" This time the words came out, but I was feeling a lot of pain, so I gave
another loud groan.

The nurse bustled in. "Are we awake then?"

Ann ignored her. "Jay's just down the hall drinking a cup of coffee, honey, and your
daddy's here, too. I'll go get them." She gave my hand a squeeze and vanished.

Sister Owens introduced herself briskly and set about checking my vital signs. I am
afraid I moaned and groaned a lot. She gave me two capsules, levering me up and holding a glass
of water for me. I groaned again as she eased me back against the pillows, and at that
heart-rending moment Jay and my father appeared in my field of vision.

"Wow, you made it," I moaned. "Where were you?"

Jay was at my side. He bent and kissed me on the mouth.

Since my mouth was about the only portion of my anatomy that didn't hurt, I returned
the kiss with interest and groaned some more. I am not stoical by nature.

Jay kept his hold on my hand but edged aside to let my father approach. Dad looked
exhausted.

I met his eyes. "Am I good?" This inane question was childhood code. When I was
about three I had asked it after being scolded roundly for some misbehavior. My father's proper
answer should have been "Thee is good," a gentle allusion to his own background and an
infinitely reassuring bit of ritual.

This time Dad sighed. "Thee is alive, daughter."

I shut my eyes as tears welled. I could tell that George Fox Dailey and I were due for a
long philosophical discussion.

My father is not a Friend, though he was raised in a traditional Quaker household, but he
does not believe in using force, except when one is in dire and immediate danger of losing one's
own life or the life of a child. He must have known by then that my attack on Smith was entirely
voluntary.

Jay said, "It's all right, George. Leave me with her until the pain pills start working."
When I opened my eyes Dad had left the room. So had the nurse and Ann. Jay held my
hand.

He told me he loved me, and I said me, too. The pain pills were beginning to take effect.
I lay with my hand in his warm grasp and felt my aches ease. My mind was a sluggish pond.
Things moved below the surface. One of the nicest things about Jay is that he knows when to
keep still.

After a considerable silence, I said sleepily, "I was so worried about you, driving on the
wrong side of the road all that way. What took you so long?"

He cleared his throat. "It's a complicated story, darling, and I'm not going to tell it
now."

I roused momentarily. "The papers..."

"George brought them. We'll talk about that later, too."

"Milos is dead." I began to cry.

"Hey, no. Who told you that? He's right here in this hospital."

"Really?"

"Yes. I guarantee it."

"Mmm. Tell Ann." If Jay said a thing was so, it was so. I was smiling when I fell asleep
again. At least something good had come out of my foolish derring-do.

I woke at noon, and the pain was awful but no longer mind-numbing. When the pain
pill--not a sedative, this time--started working, I became conscious of hunger. Jay said later that I
gave an excellent imitation of the voracious plant in
Little Shop of Horrors
--"Feed
me!"

At one, the proper feeding time, I was brought a bowl of cream of celery soup and a fish
paste sandwich. I ate both without blenching.

A polite detective from the Shropshire force questioned me after lunch. He told me Ann
had explained a great deal already and that he wouldn't tire me by going into my reasons for
coming to Shropshire. I gave him as straightforward an account of the events at Hambly as I
could. His sergeant took my statement down and read it back to me. Then the detective thanked
me and left. Sister Owens was scowling the whole time from the doorway. She was very
protective of me. Ann, Jay, and Dad had not yet returned from lunch.

My head was quite clear. I wanted out of the hospital, and I wanted the answers to some
questions--lots of questions. My aversion to the hospital had something to do with the food and a
lot to do with my desire for privacy. I needed to talk with Jay, Dad, and Ann. I needed to know a
lot of things, and I didn't want to worry that some stranger was listening. My medical care, then
and later, when I was an out-patient, was a tribute to the National Health, but I did want out of
that hospital.

I raised such a ruckus they let me go.

Jay drove me back to the Greyhound in the Fiat he had rented at Heathrow while Dad
and Ann took the Escort. The police had retrieved it, along with my untouched purse, and towed
the sedan. Jay told me Lord Henning's dogs had treed Faisel in the evergreen copse. The Libyan
was too heavy and too out of shape to scale the wall without the rope ladder, and I had left the
ladder on the wrong side of the wall. He shot two of the dogs before one of them crunched his
gun hand. I wondered how the tabloid press was going to deal with a genuine dog killer.

As we drove along the familiar road to Much Aston, Jay also told me about the effects
of the explosion. The chief constable of Shropshire had phoned the hospital. He told Jay they
thought the explosive was a substance manufactured in Czechoslovakia. The police, including
Inspector Thorne, who was in contact with the Shropshire force, believed that the plot against
Milos originated in Prague, despite Faisel's Libyan passport.

Smith had placed the plastic explosive on a second floor ledge, carrying it up in a
common nylon knapsack. It was on that floor--the third storey, in American terms--that Milos
had been hidden, guarded by an attendant nurse.

Smith had probably used an egg-timer wired to a detonator to give himself time to
escape. Perhaps climbing back down and rounding the house had taken longer than he
anticipated, or perhaps the detonator had malfunctioned and gone off early. I remembered Faisel
looking back at Hambly as he trotted along the ride. He was probably expecting Smith to join
him before the blast went off. Further testing would go on for some weeks, but those were the
preliminary findings.

"Smith must be a man of all work." I leaned my head back on the headrest and closed
my eyes. "Have they charged him?"

Jay's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "With two counts of murder and one of
attempted murder. So far."

"Two counts of murder?"

"Miss Beale's and Lord Henning's watchman, a man named Angus McHale. They found
his body and his dog's in the brush near that whatchacallum, the ride. Apparently the dog sensed
the two men approaching, and McHale went to investigate. The dog was shot, but McHale was
knifed."

I fought a gagging sensation. "That's horrible." I swallowed hard. "But surely a
gunshot..."

"Faisel--that's not his real name, by the way--used a silencer." Jay slowed behind a lorry
that was laboring up a small hill. After a moment, he added, "There will be other attempted
murder charges. When the blast came, Milos and his attendant had already reached a corridor
that leads across the central section of Hambly to the family's quarters. The attendant was
pushing Milos's chair. Both of them were thrown to the far end of the corridor and trapped in the
debris. A section of the roof fell in on them. It took the fire department two hours to pry them
loose."

"But Milos, is he all right?"

"He's bruised, and there was some internal bleeding from the earlier wound, but he's
doing very well, Lark. Ann saw him yesterday and said he was in good spirits. The attendant, a
young woman named Flynn, was struck by a beam. She has a skull fracture and several broken
bones in her shoulder, but they think she'll recover."

"What about the family?"

His voice lightened. "They're in the Canary Islands."

"What?"

"It seems they take off for a little vacation in the sun every year at this time."

"While the house is being shown?"

"Yes. I imagine it would be uncomfortable having strangers poking around your living
room."

I thought of the ornate public rooms of Hambly and smiled at his word choice, but the
vision of what had been destroyed appalled me. All that silk and silver, the ancient musical
instruments, the Heppelwhite furniture, family portraits by artists like Reynolds and Sargent and
Augustus John. "Was there a fire?"

"A couple of small ones started in the remains of the Institute wing. They were put out
quickly. There was heavy damage to the public rooms, but it's a well-built house. The family
wing lost its windows. Williams told me they think the central portion can be salvaged and that
the damage to the family wing isn't structural. The Institute wing will probably be pulled
down."

"Williams. He was the one who opened the door. Who is he, the butler?"

Jay smiled. "He's Lord Henning's political secretary. He was in the library working on a
speech for Henning to deliver in the House of Lords."

"Heavens. And he was all right?"

"A few cuts and bruises. He said to tell you his glasses flew off and were smashed in the
explosion, or he would have run to your aid. He did tell the people who found you which way
you'd gone, though."

"It's a good thing they showed up when they did."

"Yes."

I shot him a glance. His mouth was set in a grim line.

"Hey, I survived."

"Yeah, and I am very carefully not yelling at you for taking off after an armed
man."

"In my stocking feet." I felt a bubble of laughter welling up. I wondered what had
become of my flats. My left shoulder was strapped up tight, and my arm was pinned in a
state-of-the-art sling. Jay was going to be tying my sneakers for me for a while. I told him
that, and his mouth eased in a reluctant grin.

I sobered as we drew alongside the section of wall I had scaled. "You said there were
other casualties."

"None of them serious, fortunately. The cook and butler, they're a married couple, were
in their quarters in the family wing watching television. They were cut and bruised, and so was a
Henning cousin who was down for the holiday from Oxford."

"There had to be more people on the estate than that."

"Most of the employees live in villages in the area and had gone home. The gamekeeper
and groundsman have small apartments in another building. They'd just stepped out the door to
look for McHale when the explosion went off. Neither of them was hurt. They let the dogs out of
the kennel and ran to the house to see what they could do. I guess the stables were
pandemonium. They keep five horses. The groom had his hands full."

"What about the greenhouse?"

"There's a greenhouse?"

I described our tour of the grounds in terse detail. We were approaching Much Aston,
and there was a big question that had to be asked. I had asked it several times already. I kept
getting evasions.

"What took you and Dad so long to get to Shropshire?"

He didn't answer at once.

"Jay..."

"Daphne Worth was struck by a hit-and-run driver Sunday evening."

I went cold. "But she was going to go hiking in Dorset over the holiday."

He slowed as we entered the village. "She was struck as she walked back to her B and B
from a pub in Dorchester. She wasn't identified until Monday, and when she was, Thorne tried to
get in touch with us at the flat. I had already left for Heathrow. Thorne put out an APB. The
police caught up with me as I was hiring the car. They took me in for questioning."

I was shivering. "Surely they didn't believe you did it!"

"No, and I don't think they believed you and Ann did it either, but they had to check
with us for alibis. It's a damned good thing you called me when you did, or I wouldn't have been
able to answer Thorne's questions. I'd still be in custody. George drove the car in and waited at
the flat for me. When we got away it was past nine. I broke a lot of speed limits coming
west."

He found the entrance to the hotel car park, a cramped yard behind the building, and
negotiated the narrow arch with extreme care.

I was so cold I wanted to rub my arms, but I couldn't. "Is Daphne dead?"

"She's unconscious, and they did surgery to stop the internal bleeding. They may have to
remove her spleen. They think she'll live, but Thorne won't be able to interview her for some
time."

I was near tears. "Oh, poor Daphne. Poor Trevor. Did you see him?"

"Only at the police station," Jay said dryly. "They were questioning
him
,
too."

He parked the car and made me wait while he went around to open the door for me. That
gave me a few moments to compose myself. Getting me out of the Fiat was a sweaty ordeal for
both of us. Dad and Ann had parked the Escort and were standing by well before I felt
clear-headed enough to walk to the hotel's rear entrance. My legs were okay, though the soles of my
feet were cut and bruised. Ann had brought me a dress to wear and a pair of low heeled pumps.
The pumps were pure torture.

We walked slowly and waited by the elevator while Jay went to get the room keys.
When he returned he looked harried.

"What's wrong?" Dad asked.

"The lobby is jam-packed with reporters."

Ann and I groaned.

We were under siege. Dad's room and Jay's and mine adjoined, with a connecting door,
but Ann had to go out into the corridor when she wanted to visit us. The rooms had no
telephones, fortunately, and the hotel was fielding our calls with a cheerfulness born of the
post-holiday boom my notoriety had inspired.

Reporters of all media had taken the remaining rooms vacated by holiday makers, and
the representative of a London tabloid was heard to complain that he was staying in a B and B so
small he had to share the bathroom with the family. The hotel bars--both the public and the
private--were doing a land-office business, and the harassed chef had had to send out for more
brussels sprouts.