The two boys exchanged a glance. He’d offered them a way out of their trouble, and after only a moment’s hesitation they took it. Now he had to slow them down, to keep them from talking over each other and making no sense at all.
They’d seen a woman with a bicycle talking to a man with a big car. They didn’t know the woman. They knew the car, it was Sir Owain’s Daimler, and the man was Sir Owain’s driver. Sometimes, when he was out and about in the vehicle without his employer, he let the local children look at the engine, or stand on the running board to look through the glass at the luxury inside.
After a short conversation, the woman had climbed into the car. The driver had wheeled her bicycle around to the back of the vehicle and then, to the boys’ surprise and delight, had lifted it by the frame and pitched it wheels- first over the hedge. After the car had driven away they’d waited a decent interval-a whole ten minutes-and then retrieved the machine. They’d been caught wheeling it through town.
“Right,” Stephen Reed said. “Sit back down.”
He went back to Bill Turnbull. Turnbull had opened up the box and was looking through its contents. He said, “She says in the note, this box was hidden away in Grace’s cottage.”
“I know,” Stephen Reed said. “How did we miss it?”
“By the looks of it, we didn’t miss much,” Bill Turnbull said, poking critically through the litter in the box.
Stephen Reed said, “Do you know Sir Owain’s driver?”
“I do,” Bill Turnbull said. “His name’s Thomas Arnot. His father was the old coachman up at Arnside Hall. When the professor bought his first car he sent the son off to train as a mechanic. Why?”
“The boys reckon they saw him dump Evangeline’s bicycle. What else do we know about him?”
“Can’t really say. He’s one of those people who’s always around, but you never really notice.” He tilted the box toward Stephen Reed to show him the contents. “Can you see anything of use to us here?” he said. “I can’t.”
Stephen Reed looked.
“No,” he said, and then returned to the subject of his interest. “Where will I find him?”
“He lives on the estate,” Bill Turnbull said. “Over the garage where the stables used to be.”
FIFTY-ONE
Sir Owain didn’t stir when Sebastian rose.Nor when he took the revolver from his hand, or patted down the material of Sir Owain’s dinner jacket in the hope of finding keys. Perhaps they were in the door; on legs that were still unsteady, Sebastian went downstairs to see. There were no keys to be seen.
He returned to the landing and stood before the older man on the floor. He held his revolver at the ready, just in case. Whenever Sir Owain had spoken, he’d been earnest and benign. His actions, however, had been another matter. Drugged wine, a dish of mind-changing grubs, and a poisoned lancet signified a less affable host, and one not to be readily trusted.
“Sir Owain,” he said, and saw no response. Sebastian nudged him with his foot and spoke his name again.
The man was showing all signs of life, other than consciousness. His color was good, his breathing steady. But nothing Sebastian did seemed to rouse him.
He went back downstairs and found his way to the study, thinking that he might reconnect the telephone. But the study was locked, too, and there was no point in trying to break in. Two inches of oak and a brass lock. He’d seen less substantial doors on bank vaults.
So then Sebastian went back and searched the entire entrance hall, as best he could. Sir Owain had come straight upstairs after speaking to his driver on the doorstep, so the key had to be somewhere within reach. But Sebastian couldn’t find it.
He looked into the kitchen. Dr. Sibley’s body was gone, and the mess had been cleaned up. The cement floor was dry. The woodwork shone, the copper gleamed. It had occurred to Sebastian that something was different about the house, and there it was: its general air of shabbiness had somehow receded during the night, like the lines of age falling away. When he turned to look back along the corridor behind him, he saw more of the same. The rug was fresh, its colors bright. The paneling was newly polished. He could smell the beeswax.
He could almost imagine the place inhabited again, with the staff and family somewhere just out of sight. Was someone playing the piano?
He raced through to the drawing room, but no one was there. He must have imagined it. Correction: he surely had imagined it, because the great house was locked up tight and only he and Sir Owain were inside. He wasn’t sure of what he’d heard, or whether he’d actually heard anything at all. It was as if the thought of music had crossed his mind, and his senses had immediately conjured some momentary evidence in support of the notion.
There was the danger. He took a deep breath and steadied himself. This was some progressive effect from whatever intoxicant he’d been fed the night before. It had to be. He realized now that he dare not fully trust his senses.
There was no way out of the kitchen. An unlocked door led to some stairs and a basement scullery, but there was no way out of that, either.
Behind a concealed entrance in the library he found a billiard room with a full-sized table set ready for play. He even thought that he could smell the cigar smoke in the air. On the walls were caricature sketches of famous past visitors to the house, with one wall dominated by a painting of a sea engagement involving one of Sir Owain’s battleships. As he looked at it, the seas around the ships began to roll and the sky to darken. He quickly turned away.
As he made his way along a lower gallery, a great shadow slid along the wall before him, though there was nothing to cast it. Butterflies in cases began fluttering excitedly on their pins as he passed by.
He grew more desperate. From a fireplace in an alcove he took a cast-iron poker and walked holding it before him, like a sword. Poker in one hand, gun in the other. If any danger should arise to threaten him in this new, malleable, and shifting world that he’d been thrust into, he would be ready to take it on.
Sir Owain had made the Hall into a lunatic’s prison for him. But he’d be no man’s specimen.
Evangeline had run through the woods, along pathways and carriage drives that had been laid out for beauty and long overgrown, until she reached the twelve-foot wall that bounded the formal gardens. Her boots were wet and her skirts were torn. She started to follow the wall along, but it had been solidly built and had no breach. No matter, she thought, she could follow it to its end; but then the inadvisability of this occurred to her. All that Sir Owain’s man would need to do, if he were sufficiently recovered, would be to go to the place where the wall ended and wait for her there.
Hiding was not an option, so far from the world. She needed to get off the estate. But when she moved, sudden eruptions of game birds betrayed her position to anyone with the wit to observe them. The advantage that she’d gained was slowly being lost. She could not leave the immediate grounds unseen. Even if she were to manage it, there would be miles of open land still to cross. She needed some closer refuge. She made the decision to approach the house.
Sir Owain might be mad, but she knew now that he was not her tormentor, nor had he ever been. His concern was authentic, his sadness real. And though Dr. Sibley might be mean and his manner unpleasant, he surely would not turn her away without a hearing. There was a chance that they might not believe her. But if she could beg the use of the telephone, she was in no doubt that Stephen Reed would.
The formal gardens had been laid out at a time when there had been a fashion for all things Japanese. But this was Japan as the English saw it. Her climb to the house was through an unkempt fantasy garden of streams, grottoes, and thick stone pavilions all but buried in wild undergrowth. When she reached the back terrace behind the Hall, she hesitated. It was but a step out of hiding and a walk across the courtyard to the door. She saw no sign of life anywhere about the property, and heard no sound other than the steady filling and draining of the drinking trough provided for visiting horses and fed from some distant spring.
Evangeline waited as long as she dared. What finally induced her to break cover was the far-off sound of a car’s engine, down in the valley below the house. If Sir Owain’s man was searching for her in the car, then he
