The Heiress of Linn Hagh (The Detective Lavender Mysteries Book 1)
Page 20
‘I must protest, Detective!’ Miss Isobel exclaimed over the clatter of the coals. ‘Is it really necessary to waste two scuttles of fuel on the servants?’
‘It’s completely necessary, Miss Carnaby.’ He spoke with confidence, and to emphasise his authority over the proceedings, he picked up the poker and gave the smoky heap a good prod. The temperature in the cold garret began to rise as the flames took hold and the coals glowed red. Anna could barely contain her delight.
‘I’m trying to recreate in this room the conditions that existed in Miss Helen’s room on the night she disappeared,’ he explained. ‘Now, if I remember rightly, Anna was the last person to see or speak to Miss Helen before she vanished, is that correct?’
‘Yes,’ Anna confirmed. ‘I brought up her meal on a tray, and she asked me fer a second scuttle of coal.’
‘When did you take this to her?’
Anna paused and tried to remember. She remained by the fire and relished the steadily increasing heat.
‘It were before everyone sat down fer the first course. I know this because as soon as I had washed the coal dust off my hands, I had to take up the oysters.’
‘We sat down to eat at seven o’clock, Detective,’ Miss Isobel informed him.
‘So we know that Miss Helen was inside her room at seven o’clock. That is the last time she was seen.’
‘She were still here just after nine o’clock, sir,’ Anna pointed out. ‘Cook and I heard her put down the bar on the door when we came to bed just after nine.’
‘Be quiet, Anna,’ Miss Isobel snapped. ‘Speak when you’re spoken to.’
Anna dropped her head and sulked.
‘Ah yes, the door and the bar.’ Detective Lavender ignored Isobel Carnaby and moved over to the entrance of the room. Every pair of eyes followed him. Even Anna peeked up from beneath her fringe.
‘Actually, Miss Carnaby wasn’t in her room just after nine, when you heard the door bar come down. She’d been gone a long time before that.’
‘How?’ George Carnaby snapped.
‘Let me demonstrate.’ Lavender started to shut the heavy wooden door.
‘Oi!’
He hastily opened it again to reveal Mistress Norris holding the tea tray on the other side. He had narrowly avoided hitting her with the door. She gave him a withering look.
‘I thought I’d better bring this up, seein’ as someone’—she glared at Anna—‘forgot to come back doon fer it.’ The elderly woman hobbled over to the Armstrongs and held out the tray.
‘Thank you,’ Miss Armstrong said. She lifted a cup and saucer and sniffed the tea suspiciously before she handed it over to her father. She then did the same with her own cup.
‘What the deuce . . . ?’ George Carnaby’s bloodshot eyes flashed in anger.
‘I think you should stay here with us for the moment, Mistress Norris,’ Lavender intervened. ‘You were here on the night of Miss Helen’s disappearance and may be able to help.’
‘Why not?’ Miss Isobel said tartly. ‘Peter, the manservant, is downstairs—why don’t we invite him up as well?’ Her voice cut through the room like glass.
‘Just get on with it, Lavender,’ Carnaby growled. He pulled out his silver snuffbox, leant against the flaking wall and took a pinch.
Unconcerned, the detective resumed his position at the closed door and lifted the heavy bar that leant against the wall. Everyone watched him in silence as he studied the rusty metal and tested its weight.
Suddenly he dropped it—with a resounding clang—into the staples on the back of the door. Miss Armstrong started at the noise, and her tea slopped into her saucer.
Anna stared hard at the bar, trying to understand how the heavy piece of metal could drop into place without someone to move it. It looked so snug sitting in the four solid staples: the two that were widely spaced on the back of the door, and the other two placed in the walls on either side. But for the moment, that blank piece of oak was keeping its secrets.
Detective Lavender began to speak again.
‘Like Anna said, she and Mistress Norris heard the bar go down on the back of Miss Helen’s door just after nine. But it was not Helen Carnaby who dropped the bar into place. She’d already left Linn Hagh and had been gone several hours.’
‘Then who?’ Miss Isobel demanded. ‘How did the bar get into the staples? Who put it there?’
‘Not who, Miss Carnaby, but what. Do you have the two beeswax candles I requested?’
Reluctantly, she handed them over.
Lavender removed the rusty bar and stood it against the wall. Next, he put the creamy candles into the middle two staples on the back of the door. The space was slightly too large for them and they leant forward a fraction of an inch. Carefully, he picked up the bar and balanced it on top of the candles.
Anna held her breath, fearing it would fall, but the candles supported the weight. The bar sank slightly into the wax but remained flush against the door. The staples were wide enough apart for the heavy bar to remain perfectly balanced and the wicks were exposed against the flaking metal. Significantly, both ends of the bar now hovered a few inches above the remaining two staples in the wall. Lavender gently pushed at one end of the bar and then the other, and it glided smoothly across the tops of the waxy candles—and still it did not fall.
Now it all made sense to her. If the candles were lit and then burnt down, the bar would lower slowly into place and once its ends were in the two staples screwed into the wall, then only George Carnaby’s axe would open the door.
Lavender took a taper from the mantelpiece and held it in the fire. Next, he lit the candles wedged into the door staples. The wicks burst into life and flickered happily against the iron.
‘So that’s how she did it.’ Mr Armstrong’s thin voice quivered with a mixture of amazement and respect.
‘Well, I don’t understand,’ Miss Isobel complained peevishly. ‘What do you think you’re showing us, Detective?’
‘You told me the other day that these candles burn for two hours.’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘Well, try to imagine what will happen in two hours’ time when these candles have burnt down.’
‘I still don’t follow . . .’
‘Let me show you,’ he said.
Lavender whipped off the bar again and blew out the candles. Next, he pulled out a small knife from the pocket of his black coat. The blade flashed open and he deftly sliced off the bottom inch of all the candles and exposed the wicks.
Miss Isobel groaned in horror at this vandalism.
The detective ignored her, replaced the candle ends in the door staples. He balanced the bar back on top of them and relit the candles. For a few moments, nothing happened.
Then suddenly, one of the stubs fell out sideways from the staple. The bar shifted and the force dislodged the remaining candle end. It also fell onto the flagstones, rolled away after its twin and went out. Meanwhile, the bar dropped down unevenly into the four staples. The irregular thud of the metal jolted Anna’s memory.
Yes, that were the noise I heard that night, she thought. Not the usual echoing clang of the bar dropping into place, but a softer, irregular thud. Why had she not wondered about this before?
‘Good God!’ Miss Armstrong exclaimed. ‘What a clever idea.’
‘That worked well.’ The detective found it hard to hide his satisfaction. ‘I believe this was exactly what happened on the night of the twenty-first of October. Miss Helen set up the candles behind the door sometime after seven o’clock.
‘Of course, to get out of the room through the door, the bar had to protrude some way beyond the edge of the door, which would have made it unstable. No doubt she was very careful when she closed it behind her. To slide the metal back into position across the top of the wax candles, I suspect she stood on the landing and held th
e door virtually closed with one hand, and poked the fingertips of the other hand through the remaining crack of the door. It was a tricky manoeuvre, but I suspect she had practised it a few times. In the end, it worked perfectly. When the door was finally pulled shut from the landing, the metal bar was evenly balanced on the burning candles above all four staples, and it would only be a matter of time before they dropped down.
‘Then she left Linn Hagh. Two hours later, one of the candles dislodged from the staple before it was fully burnt out. It caused the bar to finally drop down, and this noise was heard by Anna and Mistress Norris.’
Anna stared, mesmerised at the thin wisps of black smoke that still curled from the extinguished candles. Next, her eyes flitted to the door bar, now held firmly in place by the staples. But more than to either of those, her admiring gaze was drawn to the calm, satisfied face of the clever detective.
Constable Woods had promised her that Detective Lavender would solve the puzzle of how Helen Carnaby had escaped from a locked bedchamber. He had.
Now all he had to do was find her.
Chapter Twenty-Five
So the bitch has gulled us all, damn her.’ The master’s voice was cold.
‘Watch your language, Carnaby,’ Mr Armstrong warned, and he turned back to the detective.
‘How did you work it out?’ he asked.
‘I discovered a few scraps of candle wax on the bar when I examined it, and beneath the bed I found this.’
Lavender pulled out another candle stub from his coat pocket and passed it across to his client. Armstrong scrutinized it before he handed it across to his daughter.
‘I never found its fellow, the second stub. I assume that it was probably swept up by Anna the next day after Mr Carnaby smashed down the door.’
‘You’re a very clever man, Detective.’ Miss Armstrong said.
‘No. He ain’t.’ Mistress Norris’ sudden interjection startled everyone. All eyes flashed towards the sour old cook.
‘As I sees it, there’s a big flaw with yer reasoning, Detective.’
‘What would that be, my good woman?’ Lavender asked patiently.
‘There’s only one door out o’ Linn Hagh, and it’s opposite the kitchen. How did she get out of Linn Hagh without being seen by Anna or me? Anna were up and down them stairs like a jackrabbit all night—and if the door had bin opened, the draft from the gale outside would have nithered us all within seconds.’ She stopped, folded her arms and glared defiantly at Lavender.
For a moment, there was silence. Then the explanation flashed into Anna’s mind. ‘But the door was opened!’ she exclaimed. ‘Don’t you remember? Master Matthew opened it and were staring out into the storm.’
The defiance dropped from the cook’s face. She looked flustered as she realised Anna was right.
‘Ah, Master Matthew Carnaby—the missing piece of the jigsaw,’ Lavender said. ‘This could all have been prearranged with her simple-minded brother.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ Isobel Carnaby sneered. ‘That idiot boy doesn’t remember anything.’
‘Failing that,’ the detective continued, ‘all she had to do was lurk in the shadows of the vestibule outside the kitchen door, catch Matthew Carnaby’s attention and beckon him over. Would he have gone to her if she had done this?’
‘Yes, he would,’ Anna said firmly.
‘She must have persuaded him to open the door, slipped outside and told him to stay where he was. Anna and Mistress Norris were busy in the kitchen. They would have felt the draught, looked up and only seen Master Matthew standing in the doorway.’
‘This happened just after I’d served the main course,’ Anna said. ‘She knew that this course took longer fer them to eat—that I’d stay in the kitchen—and that there’d be less chance of meetin’ me on the stairs.’
‘Spoken like a true detective, Anna,’ Miss Armstrong said kindly. Anna blushed with pleasure.
‘But why . . . ?’ began Miss Isobel. Her face was red, her brow furrowed with anger. ‘Why take six of my best candles if she only ever intended to use two in this preposterous trick?’
‘I suspect she practised her escape for a while,’ Lavender replied. ‘She must have used up the other candles in trial and error. She probably discovered that tallow candles were too soft to hold the weight of the bar. The extra scuttle of coal was to ensure that the room was hot enough to soften and perhaps melt the candles if one of them blew out in a draught.’
‘Escape?’ George Carnaby’s snarl sliced through the room like ice. ‘You make it sound like my sister was a prisoner here at Linn Hagh.’
‘You have to admit, Carnaby,’ Mr Armstrong said, ‘it doesn’t look good. Why did poor Helen feel that she had to go to such elaborate lengths to run away?’
Carnaby was silent, but a muscle twitched in his bull-like neck. He glared angrily at the old man.
Anna suddenly realised that it was now becoming unbearably hot in the small room. Miss Katherine looked uncomfortable in her pelisse and began to fan herself with her kid gloves. In fact, everyone looked uncomfortable except the detective.
‘It’s clear to me,’ Lavender announced, ‘that Miss Carnaby wanted to use this trick to bewilder her pursuers. She succeeded. The hysteria and confusion surrounding her “miraculous” disappearance from a locked room, and the superstitious nonsense that has sprung up, distracted everyone from searching for her. The belief that she was still in her room at nine o’clock has also confused us. There were no late coaches from Bellingham. Everyone assumed that she was still in the area until at least the next morning. But if she left Linn Hagh at seven o’clock, she could easily have been on the last coach to leave the town that night.’
There was another awkward pause. Anna had the strange fancy that everyone in the room was watching everyone else for a reaction to the detective’s statement. When no one said anything, he continued.
‘But more than anything else, Miss Carnaby wanted to make sure that no one discovered she was gone until the next morning, which gave her plenty of time to escape.’
‘I’ve already told you that I don’t like the word escape,’ Carnaby growled.
‘Was it necessary to put us through this?’ Miss Isobel demanded angrily. ‘No one would have gone into her room anyway until the next day. Why didn’t she just pack a bag and leave through the door like a normal person?’
‘Are you sure about that?’ Lavender asked slowly.
‘What?’
‘Are you sure that no one would have gone into her room during the night?’
Miss Armstrong gasped.
George Carnaby now moved away from the wall, his eyes fixed on Lavender’s face. ‘What do you mean?’ he snarled.
The detective scowled back. He looked every bit as severe and frightening as he had the first time Anna met him.
‘I’ve met those men you entertained on the night of the twenty-first of October.’ His voice was cold and contemptuous, his London accent alien in that stuffy room.
‘Emmerson and Ingram? What about them?’
‘I know about your addled-brained plan to make your sister “compliant” and marry her off to Lawrence Ingram for five hundred guineas. Just how far were you prepared to go to sell your frightened sister, Carnaby?’
Anna gasped and Miss Katherine turned pale.
‘What are you suggesting, man?’ The master’s eyes bulged in his red face.
‘How much did she trust you and that lascivious pair of sots, I wonder? Did she fear that one or both of them would come up to her room in the middle of the night and try to despoil her?’
‘The Lord save us from loose fish!’ Mistress Norris exclaimed. Her hand flew over her mouth in shock.
‘How dare you!’ Carnaby exploded. He stepped forward. The detective braced himself for an assault, stood his ground and stared back coldly.
Terrified, Anna shrank back against the flaking wall.
‘Detective Lavender is a servant of the government, Carnaby.’ Mr Armstrong’s voice was still strong when it needed to be. ‘He has the full authority of the law, so you can calm down.’
Carnaby paused in his aggressive advance across the room.
Mr Armstrong rose shakily to his feet. The movement distracted everyone. He looked strained. ‘I think we’ve seen and heard enough,’ he said. ‘We’ll take our leave now. There’s no need to see us out. Come along, Katherine.’
‘You’ve had enough?’ The master of Linn Hagh was still choleric. ‘I’ve had enough—more than enough—of the bloody lot of you. Do you hear me?’
Miss Isobel glanced at her brother’s purple face and placed a restraining hand on his lace cuff. He shook her off.
‘Not only does that ungrateful jilt of a sister humiliate me in my own home with this ridiculous game, but you Armstrongs march in here like you own the bloody place. And he’—jabbing a furious finger at Lavender—‘now suggests that I run some sort of bawdyhouse and encourage my guests to dock with my own sister! Damn you, Lavender! Damn the lot of you—and get the hell out of my home!’
‘Let’s go, Katherine,’ Mr Armstrong said firmly.
The Armstrongs left hastily, the elderly man getting down the stairs far more quickly than he had come up them, with Carnaby’s curses ringing in his ears.
Anna went with them to open and shut the door. For a brief moment, she was alone at the top of the stone steps outside the pele tower, with the Armstrongs and the detective.
‘Well, that went well!’ Miss Katherine laughed as she helped her father towards their coach.
Lavender held back, pulled a folded piece of parchment out of his pocket and handed it over to Anna.
‘Constable Woods sends his best wishes,’ he said gently.