Skylark

by Sheila Simonson

  I drove into the grassy plot and bumped over uneven turf past dozens of other vehicles to a spot beneath a large tree. A meadow had been roped off and a piece of generic farm equipment, quite new, sat idle at one end. Two other cars--they must have come from the opposite direction--had turned in after us.

  A boy in a school blazer and shorts directed them to form a new row. Clearly the opening of Hambly to public viewing was something of a local event. An enterprising soul had brought in a mobile canteen. Candy wrappers and soft drink cups littered the grass, and two port-a-potties already had customers.

  Ann had undone her seat belt and was rummaging in the back seat for her purse. "What a relief there are so many visitors. We can blend in with the others. And with any luck at all there will be gardens." She opened her door.

  "Gardens?" I grabbed my own purse and got out the other side.

  "If the gardens are on show we have an excuse to ramble around the grounds." She fumbled her bag open and took out a coin purse. A crudely lettered sign had indicated a 50p charge for parking.

  We strolled over the grass to the kid who was directing traffic and paid him. He gave us a polite smile and waved another car into the new row. It was the dark, rather dusty sedan we had followed from the village. When we had crossed the road and queued up behind a family group to pay the admission charge, I glanced back. Two men in dark suits, one wearing sunglasses, had got out of the sedan. They did not look like garden club enthusiasts.

  We took our tickets and went on up a graveled drive. Two of the children in the family ahead of us had already darted off into the shrubbery. The mother was pushing a baby-stroller. Her husband, casual in jeans and a light jacket, was chatting with an older woman who had obviously gussied up for the occasion. She was mincing along the gravel in high heels. An older man called to the children not to muck about in them flowers.

  I glanced behind us. A foursome of middle-aged women in neat spring outfits was following us. The men from the sedan were paying for their tickets, saying something to the woman in charge.

  We passed a clump of evergreens and yellow flowered shrubs and came in view of the house, perhaps a quarter of a mile off. The drive led down past stone outbuildings and a greenhouse, dipped toward a small stream, then rose again to a lesser height as it neared Hambly.

  It was a rambling, pleasant house, constructed of what I took to be local stone. The brochure we were given as we entered indicated that the family had added a neo-classic wing in the early nineteenth century to a seventeenth century structure. Hambly was large by American standards but not a swollen palace like Castle Howard. It looked as if a family--and perhaps twenty servants and as many guests--could have lived in it.

  The greenhouse was open for viewing, with an array of potted primroses set out for sale. We ducked inside. Ann began interrogating the plump, besmocked woman in charge in a manner that suggested she knew plants. I feel a vague benevolence toward plants, but I do not have a green thumb, so I stood near the open door and watched the passers-by. The four matrons were drooping over the potted flowers, and the men from the sedan had gone on toward the house itself. A large group, probably a coach load, of well-dressed adults swarmed up the drive toward us. They seemed to be making for the greenhouse, too. I thought we could blend in with them if the need arose.

  Having established her bonafides as a plant fancier, Ann joined me in the doorway.

  "Where now?"

  "The house?"

  "Right." We moved out ahead of the large group and approached what turned out to be the neo-classic wing of Hambly. The main entrance lay around the side. It faced down another slope toward a spot where the stream widened into an ornamental water. A humped bridge of improbable quaintness led to a tiny island with a gazebo. I was fairly sure the Henning people were not holding Milos in the gazebo.

  Ann took a deep breath and heaved her huge purse to her right shoulder. "Ready?"

  I began to climb the wide graceful steps that led up to the main entrance. "What are we looking for, apart from Milos?"

  "A way in to the private part of the house."

  A way in. My cheeks felt hot, and I was sure I had turned red in the face in anticipatory embarrassment. We were going to make nuisances of ourselves. My qualms were trivial compared to Milos's safety, but I felt them nonetheless. Ann sailed serenely on.

  The main hallway was marble, stark and bedecked with armor, probably of the Renaissance since it looked more ornamental than useful. Earlier armor--the kind fashioned before the widespread use of guns--tended to be plain and businesslike. A smiling man with a flower in his lapel gestured us on to the grand staircase that swept up to the next storey. Ann was having none of that. She paused and, in her best imitation of a dizzy tourist, began interrogating him about Hambly.

  To my surprise she pressed the right buttons. He expanded visibly and began describing the general plan of the house. We were to see the public rooms only, as I had expected, and they occupied the first floor--the second floor, American style--of the central portion of the H-shaped building. The neo-classical wing to the right, he said with ponderous good humor, had modern plumbing and wiring and composed the family's living quarters. The older, Queen Anne wing to the left had been given over to the Henning Institute some years before.

  Ann gushed about the work of the Institute.

  I cleared my throat. "Then that wing contains offices and records and so on?"

  "Certainly, my dear. And living quarters for some of the Institute staff, too, though they complain about the heating system. I'm afraid it's not terribly efficient."

  Ann thanked him lavishly for the information and sauntered up the steps. As I followed I heard him greeting the advance guard of the coach party.

  At the landing, the stairs branched left and right. A pedestal in the exact center held the bust of an eighteenth century statesman.

  Ann stopped to contemplate the bust. "Milos is in the old wing, I'll bet my bottom dollar."

  "That does narrow things down." I led the way on up to the left.

  "I'm immune to sarcasm," she said cheerfully. "Oh, look, isn't it gorgeous?"

  The first of the public rooms was hung in green silk--not wall-paper--and contained a variety of musical instruments, notably a harpsichord, and a lute lying open in its case as if the musician might return to play it at any moment. A tall window provided the only illumination, but the sun was doing its best, and we could see pretty well. A charming volunteer told us more than we wanted to know, under the circumstances, of the Henning family's musical proclivities.

  We thanked him and moved along the rope to the next room. There were no halls--and no closets to hide in--so one room debouched on another through white framed doorways, each gracefully ornamented. The walls were hung in silk and decked with vast, gilt-framed oils, all of them dark with age. In none of the rooms did we see a means of access to the old wing of the house. Apparently it had been entirely sealed off.

  That was disappointing. We trudged gamely on, following a clump of mixed visitors. A large, well-lit picture gallery formed a bridge across the area above the head of the stairs. To the right the rooms seemed friendlier.

  A formal dining room was set with Spode and heavy silver as if for a banquet. It did have doors--closed and connecting with the newer wing--but everything was cordoned off behind a protective rope, and a stern-faced docent watched everyone narrowly as he reeled off the room's provenance. A formal waiting room or reception room and a faded pink sitting room for the ladies completed the roster of the rooms that were open for viewing.

  We drifted slowly down the stairs, trailing a group that included the two men in dark suits. The thinner of the two had taken off his sunglasses. As he turned to say something to his companion, he was momentarily profiled against a tall window. Ann stopped dead.

  I bumped into her. "What is it?"

  She grasped my arm and pulled me aside. "Wait."

  The men had gone on out the main entry. When a laughing grou
p from the coach passed us and went out, too, Ann's grip eased.

  "What's wrong?" I asked, low-voiced.

  "One of those men in suits, the thin one, was the man who stabbed Milos."

  My heart thudded. "Are you sure?"

  "Hope to die."

  "My God."

  "Move along, please," the guide Ann had questioned said in a firm, polite voice.

  We went out into the sunlight and stood, blinking, on the stone porch. I could see the two men. They were strolling along the path to the older wing of the house.

  "Whatever shall we do, Lark?"

  "Find a phone," I said grimly. "And keep them in sight." Mutually impossible aims. I trotted down the wide stairs and moved to follow the men.

  "Wait." Ann reached the drive beside me. "Won't they recognize us?"

  I was wondering if they would do worse than that. I was wondering if we had led Milos's enemies to Milos's sanctuary.

  Chapter 15.

  The coach load of gardening enthusiasts surged from the house like a spring tide. They were chattering about herbaceous borders and seemed to have a definite destination in mind. We moved along in their wake.

  The two men glanced back as we cleared the corner of the house, caught sight of the advancing horde, and stepped down into a sunken garden area. I tried to keep some of the taller men from the coach between me and our quarry, because it seemed likely I was the one the assailant would recognize. After all, he had snatched Mrs. Watts' Harrods bag in the mistaken belief that she was Ann, but he must have had a good look at me. I had been standing right beside Milos, talking to him, and at six feet, I am not inconspicuous.

  The gardening enthusiasts eddied and swirled down into the sunken garden, which held dormant rose bushes boxed by low, severely clipped hedges, and provided no cover. Ann and I remained on the upper level, I effacing myself behind a fancifully pruned yew and Ann peering past it at the garden.

  "What are they doing?"

  "Talking. The heavier one seems to be laying down the law about something. The man who attacked Milos is just listening. They're looking up at the house. Oops, here they come."

  I edged farther around the yew.

  "...and I just love all those masses of tulips," Ann was saying brightly. "Don't you, Myrtle? I reckon I'll do the whole front yard over next winter if I can find out where they sell the bulbs, those fringy scarlet ones." She lowered her voice. "I think it's okay. They gave me a glance and kept right on walking."

  "Myrtle?"

  "Sorry."

  I peered past her. The men had reached another set of stairs halfway along the house and were walking down them toward an expanse of rolled lawn. "Something doesn't compute."

  "What?"

  "I'm not sure." I walked cautiously along the path until I could see the men again. They were heading over the lawn on a narrow walkway, away from us, away from the house. I lurked beside another topiary fantasy and watched them. "Do you think they've been following us all along?"

  Ann meditated. "From Yorkshire?"

  "From London to York, and so on."

  "Surely we would have noticed."

  "Not if they're pros." The idea of that thug watching us as we picnicked made my skin crawl. I couldn't feature very close surveillance, however. Certainly not at Rievaulx Abbey.

  Ann said, "Maybe they haven't been following us at all. Maybe they already knew Milos was here and just waited until the house was open to the public to make their move."

  I kept my eyes on the goons. They had got far enough from the house for a good view of the whole structure. The heavier man was pointing at something. I looked toward the area he was indicating, but our angle was wrong for me to see much above the first floor--we were too close. I had the impression of windows blanked with blinds or drapes. The facade did not look as if it could be scaled without special climbing gear. Thugs, of course, would have access to special equipment. Hambly would probably be duck soup to a cat burglar.

  I turned back to Ann. "It may be that they've been waiting to make their move until they could get into the grounds. It's even possible they had as much difficulty as we did figuring out where Hambly was. But Inspector Thorne must have known."

  Ann made a distressed noise. "Are you sure?"

  "As I recall, we asked him if he knew of a town or village called Hambly. He said no, which was the literal truth. I wonder if it's general knowledge that Hambly is Lord Henning's seat."

  "Would the Englishman in the street know of it?" Ann was craning around the bush, keeping her eye on the thugs. "The barmaid did, but she's local. And the house is not ordinarily open to the public--it's not a National Trust property."

  "I may be maligning Thorne," I muttered. "He did seem genuinely puzzled over Milos's disappearance, though he knew a lot more about Milos's papers than he admitted. I wish Dad would get those papers translated. Maybe then everybody's motives would be clear."

  "They're coming back," Ann hissed. She started to move toward the front of the house, but I pulled her the opposite direction. It was fortunate that the topiary shrubs had been planted in a row the length of the house. We ducked behind a yew shaped like a tall urn as the men came back up the stairs. I was gambling that they'd go on to explore the rest of the older wing, and I intended to eavesdrop. To my surprise they wheeled to the right and headed toward the front of the house at a brisk pace.

  Ann and I looked at each other. Her eyes glinted with excitement. "Shall we follow them?"

  "We might as well. There's no public phone here anyway."

  We kept back and kept quiet until the men had reached the newer wing of the house and turned the corner. We almost sprinted until we had them in sight again.

  There were a lot of people on the walkway that led up from the neo-classic wing to the greenhouse, and it was not difficult to keep a screen of visitors between us and the goons. Their suits made them stand out among the holiday crowd, though not as dramatically as they might have at home. They marched along and did not dally to admire the landscaping. They had seen what they came to see.

  Ann and I tagged behind a family group carrying a picnic basket. Just before we reached the gate, the family cut off across the rolled lawn, and we had an unimpeded view of the two men. Had they turned around, the reverse would also have been true. Fortunately they didn't, and a trio of sight-seers heading toward the house screened us as the men crossed the road.

  We paused for a coach to pull out, crossed the road openly, and sauntered along our row of vehicles. Milos's assailant was unlocking the doors of the dark sedan, facing our direction, but I bent over. The other man had his back to us. The assailant walked around behind the sedan as we reached the Escort. I groped in my purse, found my keys, and unlocked Ann's door. By the time the sedan began to make its way toward the exit, I had the engine running. The sedan turned right, away from the village we had come through.

  I had never followed another car surreptitiously, certainly never on the left hand side of the road. I hung back and tried to remember to watch out for other vehicles, dogs, cats, and pedestrians, as well as the sedan, but there were a few moments of pure fright. The road was narrow and well-traveled, and I almost slammed into the side of a Land Rover that was pulling out of a driveway. Fortunately the driver spotted me and stopped. As I squeaked past, I saw his face contort in a voiceless snarl.

  After about eight miles, the road entered another, larger village of the sort that is labeled quaint by tour directors. It became even more difficult to watch the sedan and drive safely.

  I geared down and stopped at a zebra. A woman with two children in tow pushed a pram across the street. "Keep your eyes on him, and tell me where he turns."

  "Left at the next block."

  "Okay." I crept around the corner as the sedan drove into a public car park that had been tucked discreetly out of sight of the main shopping area. I slid the Escort into a spot two rows over, beside the kind of station wagon the English call a shooting brake. There was a maroon and sil
ver coach on the other side of us. It hid us neatly. Ann was out of the car before I cut the engine. I scrambled out and locked the doors.

  The men were just emerging from their car. The heavy man stretched and yawned, looking idly around while the driver locked the sedan. Ann and I waited. I held my breath. Then the knife-artist said something, and the heavy man laughed and gestured at a well-marked path. They moved toward it--away from us.

  "Whew!" Ann shrugged the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder. "What would you have done if they'd spotted us?"

  "Ducked down and looked at the tires. People are always looking at their tires."

  She chuckled. "Clever. Come on, we don't want to lose them now." I think she was enjoying herself.

  I followed in her wake. "I'm going to have to find a telephone very soon, Ann--if only to call Jay. We ought to call Thorne as well."

  "But Milos..."

  I kept my voice low. The asphalt path led between two rows of houses, and the men had reached the far end of it. "I was willing to keep Thorne in the dark when it was just a question of Milos's whereabouts, but we know this man is a violent criminal, probably a murderer. If I thought Thorne would buy the story, I'd say we spotted the goon while we were sightseeing, but Thorne won't swallow that. And we didn't let him know we were leaving Yorkshire."

  We reached the end of the path. It opened on the village green, a park-like area of generous dimensions. We looked around.

  "There they are," Ann said, pointing to the right. The men were entering what looked like a large eighteenth-century coaching inn.

  I had spotted a public telephone booth a few yards to the left. "Okay, I'm calling Jay. We can talk about whether to call Thorne later. While I'm telephoning, you follow those men."

  "Into the hotel?"

  "You've already gambled that the knife-artist didn't recognize you. We can't lose them now."

  "Right." She trotted off without further protest, like a detachment of the Georgia militia.

  A plump woman in scarlet spandex pants and an embroidered tunic was using the telephone. After what seemed like an hour but was probably five minutes, she hung up, gave me an appraising glance, and walked off. I had a fistful of change ready in case the phone wouldn't take my card. Fortunately it did. I punched in the London code and our number.