Bertie and the Tinman, page 21
In my overcoat pocket was the small silver revolver I had acquired from Dougall, my gunsmith, a few years ago at a time when the anarchists were doing their damnedest to bag all the royalty in Europe. No, I don’t need telling that a bullet would pass clean through a legitimate ghost; I still felt the need of a loaded revolver, and you may draw your own conclusions from that.
The crisp evening air was a splendid antidote to morbid thoughts. “Ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night” hold more terrors indoors, in the shadows cast across a sitting room by a log fire, than out in the lamplight of Newmarket High Street—or so I told myself. In front of the Rutland Arms at the eastern end the waits were giving a brassy rendering of “The First Noel.” If anything was creeping up on me, it was the festive season. The shops were full of Christmas cards, and I hadn’t addressed a single one as yet. Did you know that the custom of sending the wretched things was started by my dear papa of blessed memory? He still has the most insidious ways of troubling my conscience.
I put the lights of Newmarket behind me and marched intrepidly up the Ely road in the direction of Falmouth House. I’d chosen to foot it because I didn’t want carriage wheels announcing my arrival. Ten minutes along that deserted road my confident mood was dented a little by a sign pointing the way to Phantom House. What on earth possesses people to choose such a grisly name for their place of abode? Almost immediately I disturbed a pheasant roosting in the hedgerow, and I don’t know which of us gave the louder screech. Worse, I dropped my hip flask and spilled good whiskey on the road.
The house that Archer had built came into view across open ground on my left, the opposite side of the road from the Bedford Lodge estate. Moonlight gleamed on the white barge boards under the gables with an intensity that didn’t help my state of mind. However, I drained the dregs of my flask and passed through the gate, whereupon my boots on the gravel sounded like the changing of the guard, so I stepped off the drive at once and took the silent route across the lawn tennis court toward the south side of the house.
If there was anything of a supernatural character inside, it wasn’t declaring its presence yet. The curtains were drawn at all the windows, and no radiance showed from within, whether of spectral origin or by courtesy of the gas company.
Emboldened, I approached the drawing room window that I had earlier unfastened, took a grip on the lower frame and eased it up a fraction to satisfy myself that it would still move. It responded readily, so I pushed it up fully, put a leg over the sill and climbed in.
Without wishing to brag, I can state confidently that I have as much experience of creeping around country houses at night as any housebreaker you could name. I picked my way through that, room without disturbing a single ornament. At the door I turned the handle and retained my grip on it until I’d confirmed that the hall was unoccupied.
Where do you start looking for a ghost? Upstairs or down? In the attic or the cellar? I chose the latter.
I can usually be relied upon to remember where the champagne is kept. You never know when these God-given talents will be needed. The cellar door was located in the scullery. In the kitchen I was pleased to discover a candle on the dresser. A smoker is never without his matches, so I put a flame to the wick, opened the cellar door and started down the stone steps with the light flickering fitfully in the draft.
A few steps down, the flame died. I felt for another match and prepared to strike it. Then I paused.
Precisely why, I cannot explain, but I became convinced that I was not alone in the cellar. I can’t say that I heard anything, or apprehended it with any of my faculties, unless one believes in a sixth sense.
Better remain in the dark, I thought. Why reveal myself to whoever or whatever is down there? I returned the matches to my pocket, set down the candle and withdrew my revolver. At the same time I pressed my back against the wall and listened.
Nothing.
I waited perhaps half a minute before feeling my way down two more steps, staring into a prospect as black as the Earl of Hell’s riding boots.
Then something moved in the depth of the cellar. A slight, but perceptible, sound.
I said at once, “Who’s there?”
No answer. Possibly I’d heard a rat; possibly not. With the stealth of one who has tracked the leopard in his time, I crept down the remaining steps to the floor. I probed the darkness with my free hand, feeling for the nearest wine rack. Having located it, I edged along the length of the rack with my fingertips touching the bottles. I wanted to get right away from the place where I’d spoken those two words.
From what I could recall of my previous visit to the cellar with Charlie Buckfast, the racks were in seven parallel rows extending at least sixty feet from end to end. Moreover, there were barrels and other containers stacked along the sides.
I reached the last bottle of the row. My hand probed the darkness and made no contact, but my foot struck against something that scraped the stone floor inconveniently loudly.
I ducked low and held my breath.
The thing I had kicked had sounded remarkably like a piece of crockery, a plate or a saucer, an unlikely object to find on the floor of Archer’s wine cellar, which had impressed me as tidy to the point of fussiness when I had last seen it. Even more unlikely was the loaf of bread that my free hand came to rest on: unmistakably a loaf, fresh, crusty and recently cut. The sliced end was soft and springy to the touch.
I had no opportunity to dwell on the significance of this discovery because something was happening at the far end of the cellar. From my position I could make out a faint radiance that threw the joists overhead into relief. It flickered and faded and then intensified.
Oh, Gemini! It was moving toward me between the racks!
If there was a moment when my nerve was put to the test, this was it. I crouched and waited, gripping my gun. I didn’t have a clear view. I caught glimpses in the intervals between the bottles. The radiance became brighter, flitting along the row as if it had no substance.
The thing was almost upon me when I fired a shot.
It was meant for a warning shot, and it startled me if nothing else, for I succeeded in shattering several bottles of Archer’s champagne, creating a regular fountain of froth and glass.
The light sheered away, revealing to me that its source was nothing more supernatural than a common bull’s-eye lantern.
Whoever was holding the lantern took to his heels with a clatter of shoe leather that was most unsuggestive of the spirit world. I set off in pursuit, for he was clearly making for the door. I shouted to him to stop, but he raced up the steps, pausing only to hurl the lantern in my direction before he went through the door and slammed it. Then I heard the key being turned.
I groped my way up the steps and hurled myself at the door, succeeding in confirming how solidly the house had been constructed. My entire physique was numbed by the impact. There was a moment when the air was blue before I thought of using the revolver. I stood back and fired twice at the lock and then gave it an almighty kick that burst through the mortise.
Now where was my quarry? The moonlit interior of the kitchen was as bright as day to my eyes after the cellar. Ahead, the door to the hall swung back on its hinge, informing me that someone had just gone through. I gave chase, caught a glimpse of a running figure, fired a shot over his head and by a happy accident brought down a stag’s stuffed head that was mounted over the front door. The fellow instinctively stopped in his tracks as it dropped toward him. Another yard and he certainly would have been brained.
The shock petrified him. He could barely raise his hands when I ordered him to turn around and face me. He was suddenly very pathetic. He was only a pint-sized fellow.
When he saw who I was, he cried out, “God Almighty!”
He was the Squire.
I can’t begin to describe how enraged I became at the sight of him. My temper is notorious, but my feelings exceeded anything in my experience. I don’t know how I prevented myself from emptying the chambers of my revolver into him.
He was terrified that I would do it. He blathered cravenly for an interval while I contrived to find words adequate to this moment. I had better explain the reason for my outrage, or you may have leapt to the wrong conclusion. The Squire wasn’t the murderer. I’d stake Marlborough House to a tenement that he wasn’t the murderer. He was a spoiler, a saboteur, a congenital nuisance who had given me a fright, wasted precious time and in all probability allowed the real killer to escape.
Finally I demanded, “What the devil are you doing here?”
“Trying to find out the truth about Archer . . . Your Royal Highness.”
“How did you get in?”
“Through the front door. I made an impression of the key when I borrowed it yesterday.” He started bleating out some sort of justification: “I’m being persecuted by the police, you know. Sir Charles Warren wants to pin everything on me. The murders, Archer’s suicide. What sort of monster do they think I am?
I said, “That’s a matter of supreme indifference to me, Baird.”
He said, “For pity’s sake, sir, I came in here to trap the murderer.”
“That much I’m willing to believe,” I commented. “There was someone in the cellar, and not many hours ago.”
“You found the bread?”
I said with contempt for such a crude assumption, “I had already deduced it.” I let him brood on that while I contrived a way of salvaging something from this debacle. If nothing else, I’m used to being in tight corners. And getting out of them. “Against all the evidence, I’m going to have to trust you, Baird,” I resumed. “I know where to find the murderer.”
“You do?” he whispered.
“. . . but I require your help.”
“I give it, sir. Unreservedly. Which way do we go?”
“I shall go there alone.”
“Is that safe?”
“Far from it, but there are other things to attend to, and I shall have to rely on you.”
“Rest assured, sir.”
What lip! Imagine anyone resting assured upon the Squire’s reliability. However, I had no other choice.
He asked, “Where is it? Where will you go?”
“To Sefton Lodge,” I answered. “The residence of the Dowager Duchess of Montrose.”
CHAPTER 22
So . . . Carrie Montrose.
My decision to visit the lady and confront her with the truth may strike certain clever readers of mine as obvious and overdue; if you are among them, I doff my deerstalker to you and caution you not to be too complacent. The story isn’t over yet.
The plodding majority (God bless you) will want to know what the deuce I was up to. If so, kindly read on.
Sefton Lodge is on the Bury Road, a gray mansion in spacious grounds on the edge of the Heath, across the road from Bedford Lodge, the Squire’s headquarters. Next door is a church built by the Duchess as a mausoleum to William Stirling-Crawfurd, her second husband. She buried Craw in Cannes in 1883, and two years later had him disinterred and shipped all the way back to Newmarket to be her neighbor, which was commended in the sporting press as evidence of almost unexampled devotion (the other example being the Blue Room at Windsor, where my late papa’s clothes are still laid out each evening with hot water and a fresh towel, twenty-five years after he passed on). The church, by the way, is known as St. Agnes, that being Carrie’s middle name.
To save precious time after sending the Squire on his way, I left the road at the first opportunity and hiked across the Severals. The moon was on the wane, yet full enough to throw a pale luminosity over the frosted gallops. It was treacherous going, and I was glad to reach the Bury Road. When Sefton Lodge loomed into view on the right, there were lights at all the windows.
My knock was answered by the same housemaid who had cried “Jerusalem!” when I came dripping from the Thames at Cheyne Walk. I wondered if her knowledge of the Scriptures extended to anything else, but the reception I got this time was disappointing, to say the least. She gave me a cursory glance, turned and called over her shoulder, “It’s all right, ma’am—it isn’t him.”
I can take spontaneous outbursts of awe from servants, but I’m damned if I’ll let them ignore me, so I stepped closer to the light, removed my hat and told her cuttingly, “It will oblige me if you now inform your mistress that it is him.”
She said, “Holy jumping mother of Moses!” and fled.
Unwilling to freeze on the doorstep, I stepped across the threshold into a marble-tiled, oak-paneled hall with a crystal chandelier above me and a staircase ahead. Almost at once Carrie Montrose appeared at the head of the stairs in a black costume glittering with jet. I’d expected to surprise her, but I hadn’t pictured it as a scene from a melodrama. She was uncommonly agitated, muttering and making extravagant gestures with her arms. She started swaying so dangerously that I expected her to fall. Instinctively, I moved to the foot of the stairs and stretched out my arms to her.
She clutched the banister rail and called down to me, “Bertie, any night but this!”
I told her with quiet authority, “Duchess, I am waiting to be received.”
She shook her head. “It isn’t convenient.”
I was stung into a sharp rebuke: “Don’t be idiotic. Nobody speaks to me like that. I command you to step downstairs at once, or I shall come up to you.”
She rolled her eyes most oddly and said, “That’s music to my ears, darling—but it cannot be tonight!”
I said with ice, “You misunderstand me. I have come here to question you.”
“The answer must be no.”
I put my foot on the first stair and she caught her breath in alarm and said, “Don’t!”
“Will you come down, then?”
“Impossible.”
“Duchess,” I said with an effort to be reasonable against all the odds, “you have no choice.”
After some hesitation she asked, “Will you give me a moment?”
“If it is brief.”
“Kindly wait in the drawing room, then.”
I stepped into a room of gracious proportions decorated in pink, with oval panels depicting hunting scenes. Spy cartoons of jockeys were ranged over the fireplace, Archer predictably at the center. To one side was the Vanity Fair cartoon by Lib of Newmarket in 1885, with all the elite of the Turf grouped around a figure, supposedly me, though a poor likeness in my opinion. Carrie was depicted to the right of me in her post boy hat and sealskin coat, and above us all was Archer, mounted, I think, on Ormonde.
While I was still identifying the figures, Carrie’s voice, close behind me, boomed as if through a speaking trumpet, “I shall stand here in the open doorway.”
I turned and asked, “Who else are you expecting?”
“Who else?” Without answering the question she put her hand to her hair and made a great performance of rearranging the russet curls that hung over her ears. The spectacle of Carrie Montrose flustered was novel in my experience. She was like a wasp at a window. She said, “What are you suggesting?”
“Come now, you heard what the maid said when she opened the door to me.”
“Ah.” She clasped her hands to her throat. “Bertie, I’m in a terrible state.”
“That is obvious, Duchess.” I gave her a penetrating look. “Is this, by any chance, connected with Archer?”
She nodded about six times. “He’s been seen, you know—seen by reliable witnesses. Lord Rossmore. And Machell. Machell is a pigheaded person with no manners at all, but he’s nobody’s fool.”
I said with contempt, “You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”
In response, she started reciting in a voice of doom some doggerel that I remembered having seen in the Newmarket Journal:
“Across the heath, along the course,
‘Tis said that now on phantom horse,
The greatest jockey of our days,
Rides nightly in the moonlight’s rays.”
I commented, leaving no doubt that I was unimpressed, “I always took you for a down-to-earth sort.”
She said dramatically, “If Fred is manifesting himself in Newmarket, he’ll come to me. Sooner or later he’ll come. When you knocked, I thought it was he.”
“He won’t need to knock,” I pointed out. “He can float through the wall.”
She said, “Don’t mock the dead, Bertie.”
I told her reassuringly, “There’s no need to be afraid of ghosts.”
“I’m not afraid!” she piped on a note of high indignation. “I want to catch the blighter and ask him why he jilted me.”
She was serious too. “Since you’re so anxious to see him,” I said with calculation, “why not go out on the heath? He may be riding there now.”
Carrie shook her head. “I can’t leave the house.” She pointed her finger at the ceiling, at the same time twisting her features into a look of tortured significance.
Recalling Machell’s story of the young man with a broken leg, I remarked in a carrying voice, “I was sorry to hear about the accident to your guest.”
She said offhandedly, “Gilbert? He’s in no pain. They gave him morphine and he’ll sleep for hours.”
The remark confirmed what I fully expected to hear: that the cause of her agitated manner had an altogether different origin. I said, “When we last met, I asked you about the Cambridgeshire; in particular, the rumor that Archer paid a bribe to Woodburn. You denied it emphatically.”
She said in a distracted voice, “Did I?”
I continued, “Last weekend, I spoke to Woodburn. To my surprise, he confessed that the rumor is true. He said he was paid two hundred pounds by Captain Buckfast.”
Carrie passed no comment.
