Walking Into Murder (15 page)

She had seen them before, on Angelina.

**********

Laura stared in horror. What were Angelina’s boots doing in a boarded up cottage? Had she been kidnapped, or worse? Surely, no one would harm an innocent child. Things like that didn’t happen in these sleepy villages and gentle hills, did they?

“Why would anyone bring Angelina here?” Catherine asked softly. Her face was stiff with fear.

“I don’t know. You wait here while I look for her,” Laura answered, not wanting Catherine to see Angelina if anything dreadful had happened to her.

Cautiously, she ventured out of the kitchen, through a small living room and into the bedroom. Catherine paid no attention to her order and followed her. The bedroom was darker, but there was enough light to see that Angelina was lying on one of the beds.

Laura bent over her and felt her body crumple with relief. Angelina was all right. She was only asleep, not unconscious, or worse. Her breath rose and fell at comforting intervals, and there were no visible injuries.

“Angelina’s all right,” she assured Catherine shakily. “She’s just asleep.”

They stared down at Angelina. Her face was tear-streaked, her dress dirty and torn, and even in sleep her hands clung to a bedraggled bear. She looked forlorn and pitiful, and Laura’s heart ached for the child.

Catherine sighed behind her. “Poor kid,” she said softly. “She must have been here all this time by herself.”

“That’s awful,” Laura whispered angrily. “How could anyone be so cruel?”

“At least she hasn’t been hungry,” Catherine commented with a touch of macabre humor. She pointed at a large pile of candy wrappers beside the bed. “Probably thought she was in heaven while they lasted.”

“Probably got sick, too,” Laura said wryly, “if she ate all those. Better to let her sleep while she can,” she added, leading Catherine out of the room. “In the meantime, we can evaluate our position. This is a pretty upscale prison, but we’re still locked up, and that makes me mad. Let’s see if there’s a telephone first.”

There wasn’t. It hadn’t even been pulled out of the wall or anything dramatic like that. There just wasn’t one. “I don’t know who we’d call anyway,” Laura said gloomily.

“So what do we do?” Catherine asked.

“We get out of here somehow,” Laura replied. “We have to let someone know that we’ve found Angelina and that she’s all right.”

“We’ve got to get out so we can make sure my dad’s all right, too,” Catherine said shakily. “I’m worried. Why didn’t he call this morning?”

Laura’s stomach twisted. What was she going to tell Thomas this time? She had promised to keep Catherine safe. Worse, she might never get the chance to explain.

“Two excellent reasons to escape as quickly as possible,” she told Catherine, determined to keep their spirits up. “There’s a way out, we just have to find it.”

The thought seemed to energize Catherine. “At least there’s a bathroom,” she commented as she went into the next room. “It’s pretty luxurious too.”

Laura joined her. “That’s good to know,” she said, surveying the antiquated but well polished fixtures. “The proverbial bucket in a corner in novels never did have any appeal.”

Catherine wrinkled her nose. “Smelly. Now what?”

“I’ll check out the closets,” Laura suggested, “see if there’s anything useful like tools. A hammer would be great.”

“I’ll try the basement,” Catherine volunteered. Grabbing a flashlight from her pack, she wrenched open a creaky door and disappeared down the steep stairs.

Laura found a few items in the closets – a plunger that might do duty as a battering ram, a long unused wrench, a screwdriver but no hammer. The fireplace yielded tongs and other heavy implements. If they could open a window and knock the boards off from inside, they could escape that way. She examined the windows in the living room, which were big enough to climb through if they could get the boards off, but sealed shut by layers of paint. She chipped at it with a knife from the kitchen.

An outraged voice made her spin. “You don’t belong here!” Angelina yelled at Catherine, who had just emerged from the cellar.

The child had an obsession about who belonged where, Laura thought with exasperation, and then she softened. Maybe the child’s need to have everyone in the correct place was a way of putting her small world to rights, despite the inexplicable actions of adults. How very sad.

Catherine wasn’t perturbed. “No,” she agreed. “I don’t belong here. You don’t either, though, so I guess we’re even.”

Angelina looked mutinous. “You were in the green room,” she said, her tone accusing, “but I don’t know who you are.”

“Aha!” Catherine exclaimed. “I beat you on that because I do know who you are.”

“No fair!” Angelina objected and opened her mouth wide to scream.

Catherine forestalled the explosion. “I bet you can’t guess how I know,” she challenged.

Angelina was stumped. “I’m hungry,” she announced crossly.

“You sure can eat a lot of chocolate bars,” Catherine told her. “Where did you get all those?”

“Morris gave them to me,” Angelina confided. “He said I could eat all of them if I wanted to.” Her small face looked suddenly pathetic. “He said he’d be right back, but he didn’t come. Nobody came and I couldn’t get out. The door wouldn’t open, and anyway it was dark, and I didn’t like being here all alone. It’s horrible.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. She squeezed them shut tightly, determined not to let anyone see her cry. Laura resisted an unexpected impulse to hug her.

“That’s why we came,” Catherine told her, “so you wouldn’t be alone any more. And now that we’re here, we are going to stick to-gether!” She spaced out the word with dramatic emphasis, and Angelina giggled.

Catherine grinned back at her. “Did Morris bring you here from your grandmother’s?”

Angelina nodded. “But then he went away again and he didn’t come back. I didn’t like it here then.”

“That wasn’t very nice of Morris,” Catherine responded.

Laura frowned, wondering why Morris had brought Angelina to the cottage. Was it possible he had hoped to extract money for her safe return? She remembered him telling Antonia that he needed “a spot of the ready,” which she assumed meant cash. Would he really try to pry money out of his sister by kidnapping Angelina?

Laura flinched. How horrible! If she was right, Antonia must be crazy with worry. No mother deserved that. Lord Torrington and the Baroness must be frantic by this time, too.

Angelina’s voice interrupted. “Morris said we were going to come here together and have a party and play games, but he didn’t play any and I don’t like him anymore,” she said, with a charming pout of her rosy pink lips that Laura suspected was a well-rehearsed moue designed to win sympathy.

“
Pierre ne l'aime plus, lui non plus,”
Angelina added in French, addressing the ragged-looking bear that now hung limply from one hand.
“Il est mechant,
Maurice, n'est-ce-pas, Pierre?”

Laura’s jaw dropped. The child was full of surprises. She spoke French as easily she spoke English.

“
C'est vrai,”
Catherine replied in passable French; then lapsed back into English. “I’m not surprised that Pierre doesn’t like him anymore, either.”

“I bet you’d like us to take you and Pierre home again now,” Laura put in.

Angelina thought about that.
“Peut-etre
; I guess so,” she commented with a Gallic shrug. Laura repressed a smile. No doubt Angelina was weighing the possibility of games and candy in the cottage with Catherine against the familiarity of home.

Catherine compromised. “We’re going to be here together for a bit; then we’ll take you home,” she told Angelina. “Now, let’s see what we can find to eat.”

Catherine was a master at this, Laura thought admiringly. Where had she learned to deal with small children so well?

Angelina settled for chicken soup, since there was no more candy, and bread with lots of butter. Laura made herself a cup of tea while Catherine and Angelina talked.

“I’ll give you a clue about how I knew who you were,” Catherine said. “It’s a person who lives in your house and plays games with you there.”

“Nigel?” Angelina looked delighted.

“You’ve got it,” Catherine told her with equal delight. “Nigel is a friend of mine and he told me all about you.”

“Nigel knows someone named Cat,” Angelina announced. “Is that you? You look like that, sort of.”

“My name is Catherine, not Cat,” Catherine told her firmly. “I told Nigel to call me Catherine, too. Cat was a kind of baby name. Like you being called Angie.”

Angelina digested this information; decided it was satisfactory, and turned to look at Laura. “What about her?” she inquired doubtfully.

“Laura’s a friend, too,” Catherine assured her.

“She wouldn’t let me look at Lottie,” Angelina accused. For the first time, Catherine looked stumped.

Laura decided to intervene. She didn’t want Angelina focusing on dead bodies right now, or Catherine for that matter. “We’re going to have an adventure,” she announced. “You and me and Catherine.”

Angelina was dubious. “What kind of adventure? Do we have to go outside again? I don’t like to go outside when it’s raining.”

Not a good start, Laura thought. The great difficulty might not be getting out of the cottage but getting Angelina down the muddy track.

“We’ll be like Indians, sneaking along so quietly that one sees them,” Catherine explained. “First, though, you have to help us find a way to get out of the house because some nasty person has locked us in.”

Angelina looked interested. “I’ll help,” she offered, jumping up.

“Good. I need someone to help me get a window in the cellar open so we can escape,” Catherine told her. “I hope you’re not scared of cellars.”

Angelina looked as if she was scared of them, but she shook her head bravely and followed Catherine down the hall.

“Are there spiders?” she asked nervously as they started down the steep stairs. Catherine assured her that there weren’t. Spiders were much smaller than people, she added, so they were the ones who ought to be scared.

Laura listened to their voices recede and nursed her tea, knowing she should get up and help, but wanting to think. If only she knew what this was all about, what role the diverse characters played in the plot, if that was what it was, and who was in charge, she could make more sensible decisions about what to do next. All she knew so far was that Thomas was an art detective and that paintings were involved, but in what way remained a mystery. She also had the strong feeling that some person who remained hidden from view was manipulating everyone else, an unseen puppeteer who pulled the strings, making people conform whether they wanted to or not. She wondered if she, too, was being subtly manipulated by those unseen hands….

The sound of a car brought Laura out of her reverie. She dashed to the cellar door. “Car’s coming,” she yelled.

She ran back to the kitchen, thinking fast. It could be someone coming to rescue Angelina, but more likely Roger and Stewart were returning. They had to get out of here quickly, or hide at least, until they knew who it was. What might they need? Anything she could take, she decided, and grabbed her pack, Catherine’s, their rain gear, the little pink boots and the forgotten bear, some biscuits and what was left of the bread and cheese, and hauled them down the cellar steps. She ran back up and closed the door hard behind her. It didn’t open easily and that might give them an extra minute or two.

“Can we get out the window you found?” she gasped. “It could be Roger again. I’ve brought our packs and rain gear.”

“If we can get it open enough,” Catherine replied calmly. “It’s tiny but at least it’s at ground level, and it didn’t get boarded up. I’ve got it part way open with this thing.” She held up an iron spike. “Help me wrench it up more. Then we’ll get our coats and boots on and give it a try.”

Opening the window proved easier than getting Angelina dressed. She took a dim view of the pink boots and an even dimmer one of the coat. “It crackles,” she objected, “and I can’t get my arms in.”

Laura shoved the arms in anyway. “Remember about the Indians,” she urged. “They don’t get caught if they’re quiet.”

Angelina nodded eagerly and put her finger against her lips. Laura made a final adjustment to the coat, noticing as she did so that the child had an unusually pointed chin. Where had she seen a chin like that?

Catherine’s voice interrupted. “I’ll go first,” she whispered, “then send Angelina through before you come.” She inserted her lithe body into the narrow opening easily and wriggled outside.

“Okay, your turn,” she whispered to Angelina.

Angelina balked. “I’ll get my party dress dirty,” she wailed. Laura forbore to point out that the dress was already filthy and fastened the raincoat firmly around the child’s belly instead. It was decidedly tight. Angelina had her mother’s blue eyes, but lacked her slender physique.

“Now the dirt can’t get in,” she assured Angelina, and hoisted her into the window frame. “Off you go!” she hissed. Angelina opened her mouth to scream but thought better of the idea when she saw the forbidding expression on Catherine’s face, and wiggled through instead. Laura followed with difficulty, wishing she had been less enthusiastic about buttered scones.

Rain greeted her, but it was gentler now and didn’t obscure her vision. Catherine had chosen well, she saw. The window opened onto the side of the house opposite the back door through which they had entered, and thick bushes grew in front of it, blocking them from sight. Just to their left was a small copse of trees. Incongruously, the children’s train chose that moment to release its series of shrill whistles.

“If we can get to the trees, we should be all right,” Catherine whispered when the sound finally died away. “They’re still in the car, I think. I don’t hear them, anyway, although no one can hear much over that racket.”

“You go first with Angelina, then I’ll come,” Laura suggested.

Catherine nodded. Grabbing Angelina’s hand, she sprinted for the trees.

Laura heard the ominous sound of the noisy bolt being drawn back on the kitchen door. She ran. “Let’s get out of here,” she gasped when she reached the others. “When the car starts back again, I’ll angle toward the track to see who it is.”