At the end of the cottage, a set of wooden steps led up through a trap to the loft where, as a child, Grace used to sleep and the two of them used to play. Evangeline picked up a simple bentwood chair and climbed the steps with it.
The loft was filled with rubbish now … old tools, mildewed cloth, broken mirrors, broken harness. Evangeline made a space on the floor under the roof beam, set the chair down, and climbed onto it. The heavy beam, a hundred years old or more, was in two pieces with a pegged joint in the middle. Many times over the years it had been painted with bitumen to preserve it, so that it was almost black. This concealed the fact that, between the two interlocking halves of the joint, there was a gap plugged by a matching timber wedge.
Evangeline worked the wedge free, uncovering the space behind it. Their secret place. There was a box in the space that Evangeline didn’t recognize.
She took it out, climbed down, turned around and sat on the chair, and inspected the box on her knees. By the faded paper label, it had once held cotton reels. When Evangeline had looked at it from every angle, she opened the lid.
The box might not be familiar to her, but some of its contents were. They were mostly childish treasures. A hat pin and a tortoiseshell comb, mementoes of Grace’s mother. Some foreign coins they used to play shop with, and a pebble from the Holy Land, one of a sackful brought to their school and handed out to each child by a visiting missionary. There was a fancy livery button, and the remains of some papers; if these had been deeds or title papers of any kind, then they’d be of no value to anyone now. Mice had somehow entered the box and shredded them into a mass of pulp and little black droppings.
Evangeline closed the box and looked around. If Grace had meant for her to find something here, she couldn’t imagine what it was. Perhaps it had been taken. What an irony that would be, if Grace had kept some kind of evidence to protect herself only to be killed for it.
She took the box outside and placed it in the pannier of her bicycle. Arthur had finished his work with the animals and was sitting on the stile beside the outer gate, his attitude stoical, his breath feathering in the cold air. At his feet was the rope-handled bag, made from a jute sack, in which he always carried his tools. Evangeline wheeled her bicycle through the gate and closed it behind her.
She said, “Shall we walk back together?”
“You carry on,” he said.
“Are you sure? I can walk with the bicycle.”
“You ride on home,” he said. “Don’t fret about me. I’ve another job to go to.”
FORTY-FIVE
Sebastian was still working his way through Stephen Reed’s notes when Dolly-from-the-kitchen came through with a message for him. After taking it from her and opening the envelope, he said, “Here I am trying to think of how best to confront Sir Owain, and look what shows up.”
He passed the envelope and its contents across to Stephen Reed. The police detective read over the handwritten card and said, “A dinner invitation.”
“It’s for tonight,” Sebastian said. “He must have sent his chauffeur to deliver it. The man’s up to something. Do I go?”
Stephen Reed handed back the invitation with an equivocal shrug. “Lion’s den,” he said. “Perhaps we should both of us go.”
“If he’s wondering why I’m back,” Sebastian said. “I’d rather keep him guessing.”
“Perhaps he means to confess.”
“Staking his claim to an insanity plea by confessing to the Visitor’s man before the police? I suppose it’s possible. But why should that require a dinner invitation?”
“His farewell to freedom.”
“Unlikely. I’ll keep an open mind but go armed.”
Up in his room, the detective watched as Sebastian took the revolver and box of cartridges from his Gladstone. Sebastian loaded the gun with five rounds and set the hammer on the sixth chamber, empty.
“A nice short barrel,” Stephen Reed observed. “That’s lucky. It won’t spoil the line of your dinner suit.”
“Do I look like a man who owns a dinner suit?”
Sebastian might not have owned a dinner suit, but William Phillips, the town’s photographer, had four on the dressing-up rack behind his studio backdrop. Two were shabby, one was huge, and the other just about fit.
“You look most elegant,” Phillips assured him as he stood before the studio’s full-length mirror.
“I look like the headwaiter at Simpson’s,” Sebastian said.
Sir Owain’s car drew up outside the Sun Inn at the appointed time that evening. Stephen Reed stayed out of the way. The driver held the car’s door open for Sebastian, who said, “How many will there be at dinner tonight?”
“Just the three of you, sir.”
“No one else?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you plan to abandon me again?”
“That was a misunderstanding, sir. You can be sure my employer chastised me for it.”
The drive seemed even longer at night. The landaulet’s headlamps-six of them in all, including carriage lamps on the passenger cab-cast a lemon electric wash onto the bumpy road ahead. Sebastian tried to keep a mental track of their route as he remembered it-estuary, farmland, grouse moor, woodland-but after a while he gave up looking for landmarks and sank back into the leather. He did not try to speak to the driver again.
When the Hall finally came into sight, it was like a pale shining castle on the hill. Perhaps not a light from every window, but enough of them to make a startling impression from its place above the valley. A shaft lit up the waterfall that tumbled below it, and a string of bulbs illuminated the final part of the driveway that led around and up to the court.
The main doors were open and Sir Owain was waiting before them. As Sebastian stepped out of the car, Sir Owain said, “Welcome, Mister Becker.”
“Thank you for the invitation,” Sebastian said. “What’s the occasion?”
“It’s probably of no significance to anyone else. But I’m assured of my home and my liberty for another year, and it’s you I must thank for it.”
“Sir James made the decision.”
“But you made the report.”
“You don’t know what my recommendations were.”
“But you are a professional man. Forgive my defensive manner the last time we met. I should have trusted in your judgment.”
He led Sebastian through the house. They came to a vaulted drawing room, with a wide expanse of floor on which stood a maple-inlaid piano. The back of the room was dominated by a massive marble fireplace, beside which Dr. Hubert Sibley waited to serve them with sherry.
“Look at him,” Sir Owain said cheerfully. “Doctor, manager, nursemaid, and now butler. As you see, Mister Becker, there’s no end to our Hubert’s talents.”
“Four years of shipboard living teaches a man not to stand around going thirsty for want of etiquette,” said the affable Dr. Sibley as they each took a glass from his silver tray. “Your health.”
“And yours,” Sebastian said, struggling a little to adjust to this air of genuine good cheer. He felt like an actor who’d been invited to drop his role and meet his fellow players out of their characters for the first time. A dangerous temptation, given what he knew.
It was a good sherry, as far as he was able to tell. In Sebastian’s world, sherry had always been a parlor
