The Masque of the Black Tulip

by Lauren Willig

  Then Sally, whose tugging abilities were as well developed as her sister’s, yanked on my hand, and I popped out of the drawing room into a tortured maze of back hallways. Selwick Hall was a miracle of eighteenth-century symmetry in comparison. Sally’s house seemed to have been designed by the Mad Hatter in conjunction with a paranoid mole; everything was narrow and dark and had more turns than necessary. I wandered along after Colin and Sally, who were bickering amiably about a mutual acquaintance, who had some sort of weekly column that was either a load of codswallop (Colin) or an insightful commentary on modern mores (Sally).

  They seemed to be on very easy and amiable terms – which did make sense, since they lived next door to one another. I wondered if Sally was Colin’s usual buffer from Joan’s less-than-subtle advances. And if the presence of the older sister had prevented anything from happening with the younger.

  Sally really was quite pretty. Although they both possessed the same lanky frame, Sally didn’t have the glossy photo-shoot perfection of her older sister; Sally’s hair was an indeterminate brown to her sister’s determined blond (and just how much of that difference came out of a bottle was open to speculation), long and curly where Joan’s was sleek and straight, her brow wider and her features broader. All the same, there was something much more attractive about Sally’s frank, open face. She possessed that timeless girl-next-door quality that endears itself to women as well as men.

  Of course, I reminded myself, she was the girl next door. Quite literally. I concentrated on keeping track of where we were, and regretted not having packed breadcrumbs in my purse. By the time it struck me that miniature Certs might fulfil the same function (and be less likely to fall prey to woodland creatures than the comestibles in the story), we had already come to a halt by a side door.

  It must have once been, like the narrow back hallways, part of the servants’ domain in the Upstairs, Downstairs days. Now, the back entrance was cluttered with muddy boots, old raincoats, and various other odds and ends, including a broken tennis racket and some very dirty garden gloves.

  Colin glanced out the door at the midnight black sky. It couldn’t have been much past eight, but sunset comes early in November; it had been full dark since five.

  ‘Torch?’

  ‘On the shelf.’ Sally pointed to a large grey flashlight banded in maroon, the sort with a bulb the size of a fried egg, and a wide flat handle. This one looked like it might have once been white, but years of dust and grimy handprints had taken their toll.

  ‘Is it far?’ I asked belatedly, gathering my borrowed pashmina around my shoulders. The air from the open door bit through the thin material of Serena’s dress, and made me wish I’d thought to put on stockings. I was beginning to wonder what I was getting myself into. I hadn’t seen any sign of ruins as we’d driven up to the house earlier that evening, and while my enthusiasm for crumbling structures is extreme, it waned a bit in conjunction with thin fabrics, impractical heels, and the prospect of tripping over things in the dark. And, trust me, if there was something to trip over, I would find it.

  Sally looked to Colin.

  Colin shrugged.

  ‘Not very,’ he said, in that uninformative male way that could mean anything from just down the block to somewhere in the Outer Hebrides, reachable only by snowbound mountain passes.

  To do him justice, he might have been about to elaborate, but any further description was cut short by a click of heels, and a voice calling, ‘Sally?’

  ‘Maybe if we ignore her?’ I suggested.

  ‘Oh, the innocence of youth,’ murmured Colin. I whacked him on the arm with a stray corner of pashmina. When had I developed these tendencies towards casual violence? First a glow stick, then a pashmina… Of course, there was a perfectly good explanation, but I didn’t like it, so I ignored it.

  Joan’s voice was not as easily ignored. And it was getting closer.

  ‘Sally!’

  ‘Oh, bother,’ said Sally, throwing back her shoulders in a resigned way. ‘I wonder what it is now. You go on without me.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Sally flapped her hand in dismissal. ‘Colin knows the way. I’ll be along as soon as I can get away. Coming, Joan!’

  ‘It’s just us, then,’ said Colin, switching on the torch. A ghostly circle of yellow light appeared on the ground about a yard ahead, highlighting dead blades of grass with eerie precision.

  ‘And the ghost,’ I pointed out.

  ‘As a chaperone,’ Colin replied, shutting the door behind us, ‘he is not very substantial. Shall we?’

  Did he feel the need for a chaperone? I decided not to enquire further; it might sound too much like flirting, and if he were already lamenting the lack of a chaperone, the last thing I wanted to do was give him the impression I was flinging myself at him.

  To give him his due, he was really being more than decent to an unwanted houseguest. I had twisted his arm for an invitation, and he would have been well within his rights to leave me alone in the library. He hadn’t had to make me dinner or join me for a walk or take me along to the party with him. When it came down to it, he was behaving exceptionally well, and I…well, let’s just say that I wasn’t all that proud of my own performance thus far.

  So I let the chaperonage comment pass, and said simply, ‘Let’s.’

  The thin beam of light wavered in front of us, a narrow link to warmth and light and civilization. I thought briefly, longingly, of the drinks table. But how often does one get to follow a ghost to his lair? Wrapping my borrowed pashmina more tightly around me, I stumbled along beside Colin towards the lonely cloister of the Phantom Monk.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Phantom (n.): an agent of unusual stealth and skill; the most deadly kind

  – from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  Ghosts did not have feet.

  It took Henrietta the space of a moment to realise that what she was seeing was not, in fact, a ghastly apparition from the spirit world, but, instead, a human with skulduggery on the mind. Despite Miles’s and Richard’s protestations to the contrary, there was not a phantom monk. If there were one, she rather doubted it would jaunt over from Donwell Abbey to visit the neighbours, and it would most definitely not step on twigs.

  If Miles was reprising his famous appearance as the Phantom Monk of Donwell Abbey…

  Henrietta levered herself off her bench and stalked towards the house, her dark blue twill travelling dress blending well with the shadows.

  By the time she had made it out of the protective covering of the rose arbour, common sense had returned. It couldn’t be Miles. One could make oneself seem larger, but seldom smaller, and the figure she had seen poised outside the drawing room doors had definitely been smaller and slighter than Miles.

  And if it wasn’t Miles…oh dear.

  In her indignation over Miles, Henrietta had nearly managed to forget that they were under the surveillance of the French Ministry of Police. It would have been much less worrisome if the hooded figure had been Miles.

  Hideous images of deadly French operatives rose to taunt her, and with them, a certain indignation that the French would have the gall, the unmitigated gall, to follow them here to Selwick Hall, where they had always been safe and peaceful. It was one thing to go hunting spies; it was quite another for those spies to invade one’s home. Henrietta set her chin in a stubborn expression that boded ill to Napoleon’s secret police. The spy’s temerity in following her here did have one advantage, though. It made him easier to catch.

  Henrietta slowed her steps, making sure to stay to the shadows. She crept softly up the shallow flight of stairs up to the veranda, balancing on the very toes of her kid half-boots. Her choice of footwear had been quite sensible for a long journey, but less so for hunting Phantom Monks. The heels had an unnerving tendency to click against the stone of the veranda. Henrietta would have stopped to take them off, but the Phantom Monk had already had far too much of a head start. So she tiptoe
d as best she could, turning the handle of the French doors with painstaking slowness, grateful for the Axminster carpet that covered the floor of the Long Drawing Room and muffled her steps.

  Henrietta paused for a moment in the middle of the Long Drawing Room, which, true to its name, ran three-quarters of the length of the back of the house. Despite its size, it was sparsely furnished, with groupings of little, light chairs and tables that could be pushed easily to the sides of the room for an impromptu dance. Henrietta’s gloom-accustomed eyes surveyed the room, and found no shapes there that ought not to be. The drapes lay flat against the walls, and the low, backless settees with their scrolled ends were too flimsy to hide anyone larger than a well-fed midget. The cloaked figure had certainly not been midget-sized.

  If she were a French spy, where would she hide? Henrietta had always had her doubts as to the efficacy of that line of reasoning. How could she know where a French spy would hide unless she knew what the spy wanted? If he were after Richard’s correspondence, he would most likely head for either study or bedroom; if he were after either her or Miles…Henrietta nipped that thought before it could go any farther. Making herself anxious wouldn’t do anyone any good, except, possibly, the spy.

  On the right, a door opened into the music room; on the left, another drawing room. Henrietta didn’t waste time searching, either. She went straight to the flimsy white-and-gold doors directly across from the garden entrance, and gently pulled one just far enough to slip through into the front hall, blinking in the unaccustomed light. The candles in the gilded sconces in the wall had not yet been extinguished for the night. Henrietta hovered for a moment in the shadows beneath the overhang of the stairs.

  She could hear male guffaws from the small family dining room on the left side of the hall. Miles and Richard were probably lingering over their port. Relief that they were safe transmuted rapidly into indignation. Good to know they were making themselves useful while French spies stalked the corridors of Selwick Hall, thought Henrietta tartly. And they called women the weaker vessel? Hmph. Napoleon’s army could troop through the front hall, and Miles and Richard would probably go on obliviously exchanging salacious stories until they ran out of port.

  On the other side of the hall, the rooms were all dark – but not entirely silent. Henrietta heard a slight rustle. It might be the breeze rustling through the curtains, or it might be something, or someone, else.

  The sound had come from Richard’s study.

  It was all Henrietta could do not to jump up and down with excitement, but since that would defeat her ultimate purpose (jumping up and down not being a particularly stealthy activity), she controlled the impulse. Moving carefully across the marble floor, Henrietta began creeping towards Richard’s study. Pressed against the wall, she crept past the dark doorway of the small drawing room where she had sat with Amy earlier, past Ethelbert, the suit of armour who lived next to the stairs, until she could see the door to Richard’s study, ever so slightly ajar.

  The door was so close to closed that Henrietta wouldn’t have even noticed the gap, had it not been for the thin outline of light that shone weakly through the narrow gap. Richard might, of course, have simply left a candle burning, either through forgetfulness, or in preparation for a later return. He could have left a fire burning in the grate against the chill of the early June evening. From time to time, Amy liked to appropriate Richard’s study for work of her own, curling up in Richard’s own big chair with a proprietary air. There were half a dozen perfectly innocent explanations for that pale flicker of light.

  Henrietta didn’t waste time on any of them.

  Backtracking slightly, Henrietta caught up a heavy silver candelabrum from a marble-topped table in the hall, hurriedly snuffing the candles. She wanted it for its bludgeon-like qualities, not light. A fireplace poker would have been even better, but she couldn’t count on one being easily within reach in Richard’s study. She had thought of borrowing Ethelbert’s sword, but even if she did manage to remove it without knocking over Ethelbert, she wouldn’t have the slightest idea of how to use it.

  Henrietta made her slow and careful way just to the verge of the study door. No, this was much better. With any luck, she could sneak up on the intruder from behind and –

  ‘ – fell right out the window!’

  ‘No! Not in the middle of St James’s Street!’

  ‘And then Brummell said, “My dear young man, if you must be a sartorial disaster, kindly refrain from making a further spectacle of yourself.” I thought Ponsonby was going to soil himself!’

  The door to the small dining room on the other side of the hall burst open, unleashing a spate of loud footsteps and masculine laughter. Under the study door, the brief glimmer of light abruptly disappeared.

  No!

  Henrietta abandoned subtlety and sprinted for the study, yanking open the door. After the light of the hall, all her eyes perceived was a sheet of unmitigated blackness. In her headlong rush, she barrelled stomach-first into something sharp and hard and nearly dropped her candelabrum. Had she been run through by a Frenchman’s sword?

  An exploratory mission revealed that it was, in fact, only the edge of Richard’s desk, and there was no loss of blood involved. But it hurt.

  Gasping, Henrietta forced herself to uncurl, but it was all too clear that she was too late. The lingering smoke from a recently snuffed candle tickled her nose, but the snuffer of the candle was nowhere to be seen.

  As her eyes acclimated, the black blobs scattered about the room resolved themselves into recognizable pieces of furniture, chairs and tables, several busts on narrow pedestals, and the vindictive desk. Flailing wildly with her foot in the area under the desk failed to unearth a crouching spy, and other than two wing-backed chairs there was no other piece of furniture in the room large enough to hide convincingly under or behind. Bookshelves lined the walls, containing nary a single secret passage so far as Henrietta knew – and if she didn’t know, the Phantom Monk wouldn’t, either. Henrietta was about to look behind the chairs, just to be thorough, when she spotted something that made her quite sure the effort would be entirely wasted.

  On the far side of the room, the draperies swayed in a way that suggested the open window had recently been put to good use.

  Blast.

  Henrietta dashed to the window, but the intruder had disappeared as thoroughly as though he had been the phantom he impersonated. Under the impartial moon, the park was silent and empty. The Phantom Monk had had plenty of time to make his escape while she grappled with Richard’s desk.

  Henrietta scowled at herself. She really wasn’t making a terribly good showing as an intrepid spy, was she? Of course, she still thought that if it hadn’t been for those two loud, raucous men, she could have taken the intruder by surprise.

  Henrietta realised she was still holding the heavy silver candlestick and set it down on Richard’s desk with a disgruntled thump. Blasted noisy, interfering men. Addlepated great galumphing creatures. True, they made good dance partners – when they remembered to turn up for their assigned dance, that was, and didn’t clomp on her foot like a dinosaur with a direction problem – but other than that, the Amazons had it right. They were more trouble than they were worth, and when it came down to it, she could bloody well dance with Penelope.

  A heavy footfall in the door made Henrietta jump; she whirled to face the door, the desk at her back. The glare momentarily blinded Henrietta, so all she could see was a nimbus of light in the darkness.

  For heaven’s sake! One Phantom Monk was enough for any night; she didn’t need more supernatural apparitions. Henrietta blinked irritably and the light resolved itself back into a candle flame.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she demanded.

  ‘Hen?’ replied a startled masculine voice.

  ‘Oh,’ she said flatly, as Miles stepped into the room. Reminding herself of the Amazons, she lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the glare of his candle. ‘It’s you.’

  Miles
looked quizzically around the dark room. ‘What are you doing in here, in the dark?’

  ‘Nothing you would care to know about.’ Henrietta stomped towards the door before she gave in to the urge to use the candlestick on him. That would be just how she wanted to end the day – explaining to Richard and Amy how she had come to give Miles a concussion. ‘Good night.’

  Miles grabbed her by the arm before she could stalk past, and hauled her to a stop. With one foot, he kicked the door closed and placed himself between her and it.

  ‘Hen, don’t do this.’

  ‘Don’t do what?’ Henrietta twitched her hand out of his grasp.

  Miles scrubbed a hand through his hair. ‘You know.’

  ‘No,’ Henrietta said flatly, ‘I don’t know. Maybe I would know if someone had bothered to stop by or send a note instead of disappearing for an entire week—’ Henrietta heard her voice rising and hastily clamped her lips shut before she started screeching like the Queen of the Night on a bad day.

  Well, she was justified, she reminded herself. It had been a bad day, and a long one, between broken coaches and ghastly apparitions and idiot men who first hid from you when you did want to see them, and then wouldn’t let you leave the room when you didn’t. Henrietta glowered fiercely at Miles.

  Miles held his ground manfully under the force of that glare.

  ‘I need to speak to you.’

  ‘And you were unavoidably detained by armed maniacs for the past week? Tied to a chair, perhaps? Deprived of writing implements? Bound, gagged?’

  Miles swallowed hard. ‘I was a cad?’

  ‘No argument,’ said Henrietta tightly, reaching for the doorknob.