Sutherland’s girlfriend, if that’s who she was, had left the hotel wearing only a coat. That she wasn’t wearing a scarf or gloves on such a bitterly cold night suggested to Bess that she and Sutherland were near, waiting for Sir Gerald to bring round the car from the carpark at the back of the hotel. Bess hoped the girl’s father was driving; Sutherland was in no fit state to get behind the wheel of a motorcar.
Bess scrutinised the faces of a dozen people who were standing around stamping their feet and holding their coats tightly across their chests. Sutherland and Katherine were not among them. She looked down the tree-lined drive to where two couples had braved the weather and were walking home. One couple was too far away to be Sutherland and the girl. The other couple who were only half way down the drive, Bess could see were not Sutherland and Katherine by their clothes. The woman’s coat was dark and she was wearing a hat.
Bess wondered if Sir Gerald had collected his car and already picked up his daughter. She decided there hadn’t been time and, tugging Margot’s arm, made her way down the steps.
‘Looks like Sutherland and his cronies have disappeared into the night,’ Margot said, trailing behind Bess, trying to walk in the imprints left in the snow by her sister’s footsteps. ‘And good riddance.’
Bess cast her gaze wide, taking in the open fields and the parkland on the right, the lake and small wood on the left. ‘The girl’s wearing a light cream coloured coat, so keep your eyes open. In the snow, she won’t be easy to see.’
‘No, but Sutherland will. He had on a long black overcoat when he left. What about Sir What’s-his-name?’
‘He’ll have gone to fetch the car, I suppose. He might even be the driver of one of these,’ Bess said, turning to see a convoy of four or five motorcars rumble slowly past.
Margot looked at her boots and then at Bess’s. ‘I wish I was wearing old-fashioned boots like yours. This is my best pair. They’ll be ruined in this weather,’ she moaned.
‘Better your boots get ruined than that young girl’s life,’ Bess said.
‘So, we haven’t come out in snow up to our knees--’ Bess shot Margot a look of incredulity. ‘To our ankles, then!’ Margot wiped snow from her face, ‘to make sure Sutherland leaves the hotel’s grounds, we’re out here freezing to death to save that silly girl?’
‘Silly or not, do you really want her to suffer the fate I did at Sutherland’s hands?’
‘No, of course not. Sorry, Bess.’
‘Look! I think that’s her.’
Margot looked to where Bess was pointing. ‘I can’t see anything but snow.’
‘South of the lake, this side of the small wood.’
Before Bess had time to explain further a silver Bentley sped out of the courtyard and down the drive. A couple of cars stopped to let it pass. Bess pulled Margot out of the speeding Bentley’s path and Margot, in a panic, lashed out, knocking Bess off her feet.
‘Bloody maniac!’ Margot shouted, raising her arm and making a fist at the car as it flew past. Looking back at Bess, and seeing her on her bottom in the snow, Margot pressed her lips together to stop herself from giggling.
‘You think shoving me over in the snow’s funny, do you?’
‘No!’ Margot looked suitably indignant. ‘Well, a bit,’ she said, unable to keep a straight face. She put out her hand and helped her sister up. ‘Sorry, but I thought that car was going to hit me.’
‘Which is why I pulled you out of its way,’ Bess said, brushing a thick crust of snow from the skirt and sleeve of her coat. The Bentley screeched to a halt, reversed ten or twelve yards and stopped. ‘What the hell is he doing?’
‘I don’t know, but look! I can see a girl in the car’s headlights,’ Margot said, ‘and there’s a man with her.’
‘I can’t see them, but it’s got to be Sutherland and the girl. And I’d bet my last tanner that the driver of that Bentley is her father.’
‘Why is he just sitting there?’ No sooner had Margot asked the question than the Bentley pulled away at speed and skidded round the bend into Mysterton Lane. Bess and Margot hurried along the drive in the tracks of the car’s tyres and stopped where the car had stopped. ‘I can see them now. They are still south of the lake,’ Bess said. ‘Come on, it looks like Sutherland’s dragging her into the woods.’
The two sisters hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps across the snow-covered grass leading down to the lake when a black car appeared from the lane, swung onto the drive, and slammed on its brakes. Bess squinted, trying to see who was driving the car, but it had started to snow heavily. Even though the windscreen wipers struggled from right to left to remove the snow, the arcs they made weren’t clear for long enough.
‘Damn!’ she said, looking at the spot where she had seen Sutherland and the girl. ‘I glanced away for a second, and now I can’t see them.’ Bess studied the narrow strip of land between the lake and the wood. They weren’t there. ‘It’s as if they have disappeared into thin air.’
‘I’ve got them!’ Margot shouted. ‘Two figures. Sutherland in a dark coat
