Peril at Owl Park

by Marthe Jocelyn

  “Perhaps, Mrs. Morton…” said the inspector. “Would you be so kind as to sit with the boy, while I borrow Miss Morton for a few questions about the particulars of his rescue?”

  “I’ll stay,” said Lucy.

  “As shall I, Inspector,” said Grannie Jane. “And I firmly recommend that you not put my granddaughter in peril, unless you are prepared to duel with a very angry old woman.”

  Inspector Willard bowed his assurance. I followed him out of the conservatory, not caring what questions he might have for me, as I had many for him.

  “Did you arrest Mr. Mooney? Did he confess to anything? Did you ask him about the paper knife?”

  Inspector Willard sighed heavily. “Mr. Mooney gave a satisfactory answer for every question,” he said. “He laughed when I showed him the paper knife, and reminded me that dried ink is very similar to dried blood. Until I have a microscope at my disposal, I cannot say which it is. Without some piece of proof, I have no reason to take the cocky fellow into custody.”

  I stared at him, trying to swallow the rock of disappointment in my throat.

  “I know this is not the answer you wished for.” He wiped a hand over his face. “I wonder if I am wishing too hard for success with this case, to prove my ability to those who belittle me, rather than being more meticulous in my thinking…” He tapped the side of his head.

  “Simply wishing for success does not make it happen.” Didn’t I sound like Grannie Jane? I peered through the glass door to see her needles flashing, while Lucy sat by Hector with her hand covering his, something he would only tolerate while unconscious, I was certain.

  “You can’t just let Mr. Mooney drive away in his caravan,” I said, “when he’s the one who probably captured Hector and killed Mr. Corker.”

  “What has Hector said about all this?” Inspector Willard wanted to know.

  “Hector never saw his captor. He could not say for certain it was Mr. Mooney.”

  “But how and where did it occur?”

  Oh dear. Here we were again, at a place where I knew more than I should and had hidden more than was wise. Loyalty and safety were both being strained.

  “Hector went to the coach house last night,” I admitted, “expecting it to be empty. He meant only to confirm certain points about the pirate boots. Someone attacked him from behind and he was suddenly a prisoner. Can you not detain Mr. Mooney on suspicion of theft and murder, just as you have with Miss Day? And hope to find some vital evidence before you must let him go?”

  “Mr. Mooney has been asked to remain at Owl Park until our investigation is complete,” said the inspector. “Two officers have taken him up just now to see Miss Day. We wish to observe the encounter. Our suspicion is that he has used her as an accomplice, possibly against her will.”

  An accomplice? Had hers been the voice after all, heard by Stephen before his catastrophic fall? But against her will? How could Mr. Mooney force her to commit such a heinous act?

  “Perhaps he’ll slip up,” Inspector Willard continued. “We’ll have him under watch until…Well, until I can find something against him. If only the boy could swear it was Mooney who abducted him! What did you want to tell me about that pair of boots?”

  I peered again into the conservatory, in case Hector was awake and could tell us his idea.

  “Hector said that the heels were different,” I began. “One was worn down and the other…” I paused to look at the soles and heels of my own boots. They had matching signs of wear—the back rims of both heels were softened and slightly eroded by the hundreds of ordinary steps I walked each day, up and down the hills of Torquay and the stairs inside our house.

  What Hector had described was a pair of boots not worn in an ordinary way. Boots that had apparently not taken the same number of steps…

  “Eureka!” I cried. What Hector had described was a pair of boots owned by—“Someone who does not have two feet!” I said aloud. “Inspector Willard! I know whose boots were left in the library!”

  CHAPTER 34

  AN AWFUL ORDEAL

  “INSPECTOR WILLARD, sir?”

  Before I could say anything more, Constable Gillie had appeared, accompanied by Sergeant Fellowes and Mr. Mooney. “The prisoner wants to know, is he actually a prisoner? Or merely requested to remain on the premises pending the outcome of the investigation?”

  Mr. Mooney smiled in such a way that showed he did not for one moment imagine himself to be a prisoner.

  The inspector glanced at the conservatory door, and tugged on his odd shock of white hair. “Were you not paying a visit to Miss Day?” he asked the actor.

  “She wouldn’t see him, sir,” said Constable Gillie.

  “Your persistent hounding has turned her against me,” said Mr. Mooney. “Clearly part of a police scheme to divide and conquer the innocent.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, as boldly as I have ever spoken. “Perhaps she wonders why your boots were found next to Mr. Corker’s body while his were upstairs next to those of Mr. Sivam?”

  Four grown men stared, causing my courage to dive back down my throat. I turned my attention to my own boots for only a moment before I thought of Hector crying, of his swollen-shut eye. It was up to me, in Hector’s absence, to explain his theory.

  “Inspector Willard, sir? May I clarify my supposition?”

  “Please do,” he said.

  I took the deepest breath my lungs could hold and let the words stream out. “The heels were worn away at very different rates, indicating that one of the boots had been less active than the other. I suggest that Mr. Mooney, in the guise of Long John Silver, has reason to wear one boot most of the time, and the other boot only occasionally. When appearing at a Christmas Eve supper, for example, in the company of his hosts. The result is a marked difference in the erosion of his boot heels.”

  Inspector Willard laughed, and patted my shoulder, as if in happy pride. The two police officers looked a bit baffled. Mr. Mooney put on a face of agreeable puzzlement.

  “But if you wanted to know whose boots were in the library,” he said, “why did you not simply ask?”

  He might have dashed a cup of cold water into my face. Why had we not simply asked?

  “You knew I’d been in there,” continued Mr. Mooney. “How can it be of import that I took off my boots? What of it?”

  “Why did you not mention that you had removed your boots?” Inspector Willard said.

  “I suppose I did not consider it a matter of importance, what I might or might not wear on my feet. I have a right to take off my—”

  “When did you take them off?” asked the inspector, calmly and quietly.

  Oh, he was clever. Because he did not add, Before you snatched the Echo Emerald from Mr. Corker’s hand? Or after he’d given you a bloody nose?

  Mr. Mooney’s mouth opened, and then it closed. He had stepped into a trap and, for the first time, was not ready with a clever answer. There could be no sensible reason to remove his boots during the scene that he had described to Inspector Willard.

  Something about the boots was wrong, just as Stephen had said.

  “You have confessed to handling a stolen gemstone,” said Inspector Willard, “and to wearing a bloody shirt in the same room where a blood-soaked corpse was discovered a few hours later. I will ask you, Sebastian Mooney, to return to the Avon Room while we re-examine the timeline of your actions.”

  “Really, Inspector,” said Mr. Mooney. He pulled out his pocket watch and glanced at the time. What was he so impatient to be doing elsewhere? “I’m getting a bit fed up with the implication that I—”

  A tap-tap sound made our group turn as one to see Lucy’s face through the glass of the conservatory door. She waved urgently, begging me to come inside.

  “A stolen gemstone,” repeated Inspector Willard, “a blood-soaked corpse, and the abduction of a young boy�
��”

  I heard their departure rather than watching it, as I hurried to find Hector awake, with a faint pink glow in his cheeks.

  “You look much better,” I said. “But I expect you wish you were at home in your own bed. In Belgium, I mean, with your own mother.”

  Hector turned his face away, so I knew that I was right.

  I quickly shifted direction. “The inspector has just taken Mr. Mooney for more questioning.”

  Grannie Jane tucked away her knitting and rose. “I will alert Marjorie that Hector is awake,” she said. “She will no doubt ask Dr. Musselman to attend.”

  Hector bugged his eyes at me in horror.

  I shrugged helpless shoulders in return. “Thank you, Grannie Jane,” I said.

  “Are you needing another drink, Hector?” asked Lucy. “We may ask Cook for anything our hearts desire while you are an invalid.”

  “Merci, non,” said Hector. “I require nothing.”

  “Orange juice!” I jumped at the chance of a few minutes alone with Hector. “Mummy says freshly squeezed oranges are best when you’re feeling low. Thank you, Lucy. If Cook has any.”

  There would be no oranges during a snowstorm in December. How long would it take to come up with an alternative refreshment?

  “I’ll ask for a pitcher!” said Lucy, rushing away.

  Hector’s eyebrow made its comment on my mode of Lucy removal.

  “Tell to me all that has happened since I am gone,” he said. “I am missing many chapters, am I not?”

  “I don’t think Annabelle’s a suspect anymore,” I said, “except that the inspector just suggested she might be an accomplice. But she was having a bath when Stephen fell down the stairs, unless she was just pretending.”

  “You are saying that Annabelle may, or, perhaps, may not be guilty,” said Hector. “How is this news?”

  “If what you say about the boots is true, which it likely is, then Frederick is innocent too, even with that dunderhead remark, though I suppose he could have carried Mr. Mooney’s boots to the library just as easily as Mr. Mooney might have carried the dead man’s boots upstairs, so, really…”

  Hector was looking at me, shaking his head. “Another shaky solution.” He pushed off one of the quilts that covered his legs and then kicked off the other. “I am…too confined.”

  “Snug as a bug in a rug,” I said.

  He sat up awkwardly, tipping off the side of the chaise. As he landed, something rolled out from his pocket and across the floor.

  “Oh,” he snatched it up. A small glass tube.

  “I find this in the coach house,” he said, his voice more vigorous with every word. “I put into my pocket and then I am attacked and I forget.” He waved it back and forth. “You see what it is? You see?”

  “Stop waggling your hand and let me look!”

  He passed it over. Not a tube but a medical vial with a cork in one end and a label stuck to the side: Chloroform. Old Lady Greyson’s tooth medicine. Just a few drops left.

  “But why would it be in the—?”

  Hector struggled to his feet. “We must hurry!” he said. “Zut! Hector Perot needs a new brain!” He clasped my arm. “Come, come!”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Mr. Sivam!” said Hector, dragging me through the door and along the passage. “The moaning and muttering! I am thinking it is Mr. Mooney making such noises, but I am wrong. Dépêche-toi!” He was limping but moving quickly enough that I must trot to keep up. “We must rescue him just as you rescue me.”

  “You mean…” We’d reached the side door and hustled through it, meeting winter wind without coats or hats. “You mean Mr. Mooney used the chloroform to put Mr. Sivam to sleep?”

  Hector nodded, his eyes streaming from the cold, his lips quite blue already. How foolish to let him come outside while still recovering from his ordeal. At least he was wearing his woolly pullover. I was not. We skittered along the path toward the courtyard.

  “But why?” I said.

  Why keep someone imprisoned and asleep? Unless…that person had something you wanted. Or knew something that you wanted to know.

  “The emerald,” I said. “Oh, my goodness, Mr. Mooney has been trying all this time to find out where the real Echo Emerald is hidden.”

  Hector was breathing in noisy little huffs as we entered the snowy and nearly empty courtyard. The stable was unguarded and only one stoic reporter stood outside the bakehouse door. He came right over when he saw us, aglow with his usual eagerness.

  “You’re moving very quickly,” said Mr. Fibbley, trotting along. “Is my persistence about to pay off, while my colleagues have departed to file their stories and celebrate in the pub?”

  “You may not come in,” I told him. “Not yet.”

  We stepped from the bright, blustery courtyard into the gloom of the coach house. Hector glanced at the splintered panels of his recent prison but then hurried past. The actors’ caravan looked to be almost packed and ready to go, with little room to spare. The basket of pirate boots sat beside the caravan’s open doors.

  The Sivam motorcar sat in the same place it had all week, quite near where Hector had lain through his ordeal. The familiar plaster goose sat on the bonnet. We climbed up to the running board and peered inside. The luxurious bearskin blanket lay across the back seat, covering a lumpy form. My hand moved from the smooth, icy metal of the car door to pull on thick, soft fur that seemed to be alive and faintly groaning. Beneath the blanket, hands clutching his head, was Mr. Lakshay Sivam.

  The man we sought and the man we found were not the same. Who would match this sorry creature with the fine and handsome guest who had arrived at Owl Park only four days earlier? The bearskin about his shoulders—which then had seemed like a regal garment—now dwarfed a bleary-eyed man, hunched in pain and weeping. His hair was not sleek and shining as it had been during our first evening together, but tangled and awry. His skin, normally such a warm brown, was now a peculiar shade of gray, closer to the color of beach sand at twilight. A livid welt across his jaw suggested that he had been struck with a wrench or some other tool. Further wounds and bruises we saw later, but for now we were most concerned that we might assist him into the house.

  Inch by inch, we helped him turn in the seat, that we could coax his legs to take his weight. He seemed not fully conscious, but nor was he afraid. Had the chloroform dulled his mind? I supposed he knew we were of best intent and not in league with the brute who had tortured him.

  Hector, ever so gently, put his arms under Mr. Sivam’s shoulders and encouraged him to lean. His teeth bit into his lower lip so fiercely I saw a drop of blood.

  “Aggie,” he whispered. “Will you call someone? I do not believe I have the strength…”

  I had been foolishly gaping, but now I ran.

  “Help!” I cried to Mr. Fibbley, who had loitered by the door, probably trying to eavesdrop. “Help Hector inside!” The reporter slipped past me and I dashed toward the house.

  “Aggie!” Lucy burst through the kitchen door. “Hide, Aggie, hiiiiiide!”

  “I need…to get…help!” I panted.

  Lucy ran toward me, waving her arms. “Where’s Hector? Get Hector! Mr. Mooney is coming! He kicked Constable Gillie so hard that he fell over, howling. Mr. Mooney has escaped from the police!”

  CHAPTER 35

  A FIGHT TO THE FINISH

  ALERT HECTOR? Or call for James and a constable? I turned one way and then the other, slipping in the snow, not knowing what to do. But shortly I had no choice about the matter, for Mr. Mooney was upon us. I felt my hair wrenched nearly from its roots as the villain grabbed my braids and used them to haul me backward. I would have toppled but for the menacing grip on my hair. Pain like a hatful of pins pierced my head. I clawed and batted but could not reach the eyeballs I wished to gouge out.

  Lucy star
ed, eyes round in horror. She spun in a circle but no one was here to save us. She closed her eyes and screamed, the same astonishing scream she had used in the library on Christmas morning.

  Mr. Mooney cursed and jerked me hard again. I vowed to myself I would cut off my hair if I were still alive tomorrow. In the two heartbeats following Lucy’s scream, nothing happened. And then, oof ! Mr. Mooney let go of my head and I dropped to the ground. I rolled out of his reach in the snow, and scrambled to my feet. Mr. Mooney had fallen also, had been knocked down! And now was fighting his assailant. Mr. Fibbley, astride the actor, punched him hard on the nose. Blood spurted in an arc, staining the snow with a spray of scarlet drops.

  All at once, the police were there, and Frederick and Norman, and a furious Mrs. Hornby wielding a soup ladle. Mr. Mooney was soon subdued with handcuffs locked about his wrists, but even then, he glared at Mr. Fibbley.

  “You punch like a girl,” he growled. A trickle of blood seeped into his mustache.

  “Are you speaking from experience?” said Mr. Fibbley. “I have no doubt that plenty of girls would love to do what I just did.”

  “Starting with Annabelle,” I shouted. “Because of you, Annabelle has been locked up for days! Because of you, Mr. Corker is dead!”

  Mr. Mooney’s eyes fixed on me, the way an eagle’s might, if I were a rabbit. I wasn’t afraid, because Inspector Willard was there, but it felt as if my whole insides had the hiccups.

  “I would never do Annabelle harm,” he said, very quietly. “Not on purpose. I wish you’d tell her goodbye from me.”

  “You…” I began. And then began again, just as quietly. I hadn’t planned what to say, but it poured out. “Everything you told us about that night in the library really happened, didn’t it?” I said. “Except you changed the actors. It was you who stole the jewel. You who took off your boots and looked at the emerald through the magnifying glass and realized it was only a copy, because you know a thing or two about jewels, don’t you? I’d guess you pocketed the magnifier when you saw it out of place on Christmas morning and sneaked in later when the constable wasn’t looking, to put it back on the desk. You didn’t expect we’d notice. It was Mr. Corker who saw you holding the stone and called you a dunderhead for stealing from the other manors and ruining everything.”