In five minutes Hugh Morton was back. Minutes later, Trelawney returned, got behind the wheel, and looked over his shoulder to me to say, “I discovered the telephone was here and turned around. When I got back, that other motorcar was coming up the drive like a bat from Hades. Nearly ran down Morton. I stopped long enough to take him up, and we went after it. Miss, he’s headed for Somerset. We followed him far enough to find out if he was returning to Portsmouth. But he’s not.”
Somerset.
It was all I needed to hear.
“He’s going to kill my father,” I answered, and told them what I’d found in the Baldwin house.
I knew I should have turned back and called Captain Barclay once more, but if my mother was on her way to Longleigh House, then Iris and our Cook were at home alone. And God knew where my father was. Time was not on my side.
I could only hope that everyone had taken my warning seriously. That Captain Barclay had given my message to my mother and Simon. It was more important to reach my home as quickly as I could, and trust to Captain Barclay’s powers of persuasion at Longleigh. Unless he had rashly set out to find me.
The cloud that had moved over the sun was thicker now, joined by blacker ones moving onto the coast. When I looked back, there was a long stretch of intense gray, and I thought I saw a flash of lightning.
The journey ahead was a long one, and Trelawney had lost time coming back for me. But I was glad he had.
Every mile seemed to drag on forever, leaving me in an agony of impatience. Except for the cup of tea at Dr. Glover’s surgery, I had had nothing to eat all day, and neither had my companions. We were well into Somerset before we had to stop for petrol. I dashed into the nearest shop for sandwiches and a Thermos of tea while Trelawney was seeing to the motorcar. Surely at some point, Ralph Mitchell would be doing the same, delaying him as we were delayed.
The storm was still behind us, skirting the coast. Ahead was bright sunshine, turning the Somerset hills to a rich green as the road looped and ran straight, then looped again, following the contours of the land. We were silent for the most part, uneasy, wondering if somewhere ahead of us Ralph Mitchell had found his target or had turned toward London when he had failed.
At a crossroads I saw Captain Barclay barreling down on us in Dr. Gaines’s motorcar. Trelawney blew the horn, and both vehicles drew up by the verge. The Captain got out and came limping toward us, a frown on his face.
“I thought you had no means of transport,” he said at once. “Who the devil are these men? And are you all right?”
“I was fortunate,” I said, not taking the time to present my companions. “Where is Simon? Is he with my mother?”
“The Sergeant-Major is on his way to London, in search of your father. I passed on your message, but he has been ordered to follow up on what Captain Grayson reported.”
“Alone? He shouldn’t be driving.”
“He persuaded your mother to drive him.”
At least that meant she was out of harm’s way as well. I could still see Mrs. Palmer lying in the middle of her carpet, bleeding heavily. I shivered.
“Where are you going? I’ll follow you.”
“No one has heard from my father?”
“No one had by the time I left,” he said. “He could be in London, Dover, Portsmouth-Scotland, for that matter.”
“Then we should go directly to my parents’ house. Sergeant Mitchell will be there ahead of us, but with luck he’ll wait for my father, just as we will. And we can stop him from walking into a trap.”
“Bess, are you sure about this?”
“I’m sure. I don’t know why he hates my father, but if he shot Julia Palmer, then he’ll certainly kill the Colonel Sahib if he can.”
Captain Barclay cast an eye over Private Morton, who stared back without a word. The Captain finally said, “I know you from somewhere.”
“I doubt it,” I intervened quickly.
But I could see that he was skeptical as he turned back toward his motorcar.
The sun was casting long shadows, summer shadows, across the landscape when I finally saw the chimneys of my home just ahead. I asked Trelawney to stop, and shortly afterward Captain Barclay came up to the motorcar to ask how to proceed.
“I’m not quite sure,” I said. “If you will lend me Dr. Gaines’s motorcar, I’ll drive up to the house. Meanwhile, Trelawney should stay here in the event we’ve got ahead of Sergeant Mitchell.”
Trelawney balked at that, but I shook my head. “You’re armed, you can stop him. Meanwhile,” I went on, “Captain, if you and Private Morris will please go around to the rear of the house, following that lane just there, by the signpost. It will take you only a few minutes of walking, but if you come in that way, he won’t expect it.”
It was reluctantly agreed upon, and I got behind the wheel of the doctor’s motorcar and began to drive openly up to the house.
I found I was holding my breath as I rounded the last bend in the drive and could see the door directly ahead in the straightaway. It stood open.
And two motorcars sat there before it, both of them empty.
One was the vehicle that I’d last seen hurtling down the long line of hawthorn trees from the Baldwin house, and the other was the familiar motorcar my father drove.
My heart sank.
I was too late to prevent the encounter that I’d dreaded for the past seven hours.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I BRAKED, THEN pulled Dr. Gaines’s motorcar into the shelter of a stand of rhododendron, which more or less hid it from view. If anyone was watching for it, I’d already been seen, but I didn’t care. All I could think of was my father.
I reached the door without being challenged. And I stood there, listening for voices, something to guide me to him.
There was only silence inside.
I’d already stepped into the hall when I heard my father’s voice from somewhere inside. He was alive. The relief was overwhelming.
“I assure you, I have no influence over Sandhurst. If you failed to pass the standards set by the staff, I can neither change nor appeal their ruling in any way.”
“You were there,” another voice replied. “On the day I washed out. I saw you. Captain Baldwin didn’t want me to marry his daughter, and the best way to go about that was to see that I was not allowed to finish the course.”
“You give me far too much credit,” my father said drily. “But that’s neither here nor there. Why did you try to kill my daughter? Because she discovered the body of Major Carson?”
“Did she, by God” was the answer. “No, I saw to it that the man who did was removed. I wanted her for the same reason I killed Carson. To diminish you as you’d diminished me. Besides, he’d married a woman named Julia, and every time I looked at him, promising officer, darling of the regiment, I hated him.”
“Indeed,” my father said, in a tone of voice I knew all too well. He was deeply, furiously angry. “Carson. Private Wilson. Nurse Saunders. That’s quite a list.”
“You’ve forgot Palmer. I killed him as well.”
“Did you? Odd that I’ve never been told he was dead.”
My father’s voice had come from his study. If I called to him, would Mitchell shoot? Or wait for me to walk into the room?
I could feel the weight of the little pistol in my pocket. If I used it, I would very likely not kill Mitchell, but if I
