Death at Thorburn Hall

by Julianna Deering

  One of the men at the window looked at Drew and then scowled at Lisa. She returned him a somewhat disgusted shrug and then pressed herself flatter against the wall when there was a sharp knock at the front door.

  “All right, Schmidt, or whatever you’re calling yourself, open up,” said an authoritative English voice. “This is MI5.”

  At that, there was a scramble inside the room, the slamming of cupboards and drawers and the unmistakable sound of weapons being snatched up. Next came the sound of the front and back doors splintering, followed by shouting and swearing in both German and English, a brief but violent struggle, and then silence. The only shot fired had shattered the window above Drew’s head.

  “All right, Mr. Farthering,” Lisa said, returning her pistol to the small bag slung over her shoulder as lights popped on in the upper floors of some of the surrounding shops. “You can get up now.”

  He scrambled to his feet and glanced in the window. The shade had been torn down in the struggle and he could see Mac inside. He was smiling broadly and having his hand shaken by the man who seemed to be in charge of the whole operation.

  Drew turned back to Lisa. “I, er, seem to have stumbled into a rather delicate situation. Sorry about that. Though you might have told me what you were up to.”

  “I didn’t have time, and you wouldn’t have believed me, anyway. It was all I could do to make sure you didn’t give us away or get shot before we had everything secured.” She dug in her purse and pulled out a cigarette. Drew lit it for her. “We’ve been working months on this operation,” she said after she had taken a few puffs, “and we didn’t need amateurs spoiling it all at the last minute.”

  “Sorry.”

  “If Schmidt had got away, I think I would have gone ahead and put a bullet in your head myself.”

  Drew grinned. “Who is he? Someone from here?”

  “He’s a London man. That’s why he needed Mac and me to do the groundwork for him up here. He pulls the strings and comes in at the end to pay off and collect his information.”

  Drew wrinkled his forehead. “Not German?”

  “No. Just a first-class traitor. This wasn’t his first job, but I promise it will be his last.”

  “I would have been happy to help you catch him if you had asked.”

  “You’ve been a great help, actually,” she said with a bit of laugh. “The more you poked your nose into things, the worse Mac looked and the more Schmidt believed him a traitor. Mac even used you as an excuse to move this meeting up a week.”

  “I don’t know if I should be pleased or insulted.”

  She dropped the cigarette to the ground and crushed it with her shoe. “You’d better come in and meet my chief.”

  Drew glanced into the room once more. The old woman, clearly Schmidt’s confederate, and the man himself were being led away, both handcuffed and glowering.

  “Your chief seems rather occupied at the moment. Could we postpone introductions for now?” He took his watch from his waistcoat pocket and held it up to the window, the sixpence that hung from the chain glimmering silver in the faint light. “If I’m not back at The Swan in less than four and a half minutes, my wife is going to telephone Sergeant Shaw and tell him I’m being done to death by Nazi spies and need rescuing.”

  “We can’t have that,” Lisa said. “Consider the introductions postponed.”

  Drew nodded. “Before I go, might I ask you if you happen to know what Mr. MacArthur was doing on the evening of the fifth?”

  “What day was that?”

  “Friday a week ago. The night he left his car parked under the trees near the stables at Thorburn Hall.”

  “Oh. I believe that’s when the chief met him at a little cottage we use sometimes, about a quarter mile from the Rainsby property. Not really a road a car can get down. I understand they were going over the details about how we’d handle tonight.”

  “And you were at the bookshop here doing what? Making sure Schmidt and Frau Dunst were occupied while this meeting was taking place?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, Mr. Farthering. How did you know that?”

  “Seems logical.”

  “No, I mean how did you know I was here?” Before he could answer, she held up one hand. “No. I know. Mrs. Farthering, right?”

  “I could never get along without her. Still, forgive my bluntness, but I really must ask. You and MacArthur there, you two never—”

  Her eyes flashed. “Never.”

  “His wife didn’t divorce him over you, I take it.”

  “Of course not,” Lisa said. “But it’s not my place to say anything else about that. Still . . .” She took a deep drag of her forgotten cigarette and then blew the smoke straight up. “I’d have let her fry.”

  So Mac was the stout fellow Lord Rainsby had originally thought him to be. Not a traitor or a murderer or, it would seem, even an adulterer. Madeline was going to be disappointed.

  “What about Hugh Barnaby? The man who was murdered this past weekend. Does he have any connection to any of this?”

  “No. Why should he?”

  “I don’t know. He said a few things that made me think he might have sympathies in that direction,” Drew said. “But surely Jamie Tyler was in it.”

  “Who?”

  “Jamie Tyler, the caddie.”

  Lisa shrugged and shook her head.

  “My wife saw you talking to him at Muirfield the first day of the Open. Good-looking fellow, tall, dark eyes, very blond hair.”

  “Oh, that one. I remember him. The hound wanted me to meet him at the pub that night for drinks and, no doubt, more. I sent him off with a flea in his ear, I can tell you. As if I didn’t have more important things to do than waste my time with his sort.” She drew a quick breath. “Wait a minute. You said Jamie Tyler. He wasn’t the one they found on the beach this morning, was he?”

  “He was.”

  She winced. “I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. I hadn’t realized.”

  “You’re saying you didn’t know anything about him? He wasn’t involved in any of this with Schmidt?”

  Again she shook her head. “Sorry. That time at Muirfield was the first and last time I ever saw him. I never even got his name.”

  That made this whole thing all the more puzzling. So much for his brilliant theory about Mac, Barnaby, and Tyler being part of a ring of Nazi spies. He’d have to start all over again.

  “Well, as I said, I’d best get back to Mrs. Farthering before she raises the watch.”

  Lisa lifted one blond eyebrow. “I don’t actually have to tell you to keep all this to yourself, do I?”

  “You may rely on me,” he told her, and then he hurried back to The Swan.

  As Drew expected, by the time he jogged back to the hotel, Madeline was fully dressed and leaning out her window, watching the street he’d followed Mac into. The worried lines in her face smoothed into relief and then a smile and then a scowl.

  “I was just about to go over to the police station to get Sergeant Shaw,” she said when he climbed the trellis back up to her window. “Was that a shot I heard?”

  “Only a little one.”

  “I suppose he got away and I’m lucky not to be a widow right now.”

  “He did not get away.” Drew kissed her pursed lips. “But, yes, you are decidedly lucky I’ve returned to your eager arms.” He scrambled over the writing desk and into the dark room. “Don’t put on the light, darling. No need to scandalize Mrs. Drummond. I’ll tell you all about it, but I’m afraid what I’ve found out only makes the investigation that much more confusing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He sat down with her on the settee, one arm around her waist. “Now, if you’ll just let me tell it straight through and hold your questions till the end of the presentation—”

  “Just tell me you’re not hurt.” She stroked the hair back from his forehead, her anxious eyes all that were visible in the dimness.

  “Darling.” He pulled he
r closer. “I am perfectly fine. What is it you told me your grandfather used to say, the one from Georgia?”

  He felt her giggle.

  “‘Fine as frog’s fur split four ways.’”

  “There,” he said with a chuckle, “and what could be finer than that?”

  “All right. Now tell me what happened with Mr. MacArthur. You didn’t do anything silly like tie him up somewhere, did you?”

  He told her what had happened at the bookshop, tactfully omitting the bit about the gun that had been pressed against his head.

  “Then Mac couldn’t have been the one Joan heard with her mother that night,” Madeline said when he’d finished. “But she was so sure.”

  “I know. But remember, she saw her mother coming down the path, but she never actually saw Mac. Maybe she just assumed he was the one Lady Louisa was meeting because of his car.”

  Madeline frowned. “She seemed awfully sure.”

  “She did, but she’s never liked Mac. Maybe she let that convince her he was the one when she didn’t see or hear enough to be certain.”

  “I suppose,” Madeline said, not sounding at all convinced. “But who could Lady Louisa have met if not Mac?”

  “The puzzler is that Mac was at the cottage that night. That was his car I saw parked under the trees near the road. So the question is where would she have been coming from and with whom? Now that I can’t blame the murders on Nazi spies and British traitors, I’m right back where I started—a simple domestic murder for the sake of the dead man’s estate. But if my cousin is the murderer, I’m deuced to know how she did it. She had to have had help, and that brings us back to our mystery man.” He turned the great jumble of conflicting facts over in his mind. “I think there’s only one thing for it tonight.”

  “Get a good night’s sleep and talk it over again in the morning?”

  “Nonsense. It’s hardly eleven. I think we should go back to Thorburn Hall and talk this all over with Nick. Now that we know more about what Mac wasn’t doing, maybe we sort out what’s left and make something of it.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that.” Madeline laughed softly. “I suppose we may as well see what the three of us can come up with.”

  “The four of us,” Carrie said.

  Seventeen

  Drew and Madeline both started and then turned to see Carrie, just a slim white silhouette standing in the darkened doorway into the hall. She had Bonnie cradled in one arm.

  “I want to know what’s going on,” she said, hurrying to them so she wouldn’t have to raise her voice to be heard. “I couldn’t sleep and my room was too warm, so I went to open the window and I saw you climb up. I heard that shot, too. I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t listen in, but I heard you talking and I had to know what happened. Nick wasn’t with you, was he?”

  “Not to worry,” Drew said. “I left him minding Kuznetsov.”

  “I don’t know why you bothered,” Madeline said. “All he ever does is eat and sleep. Nick probably won’t see him all evening.”

  “I believe Nick found a book in the Hall library about increasing the yields on forage grasses,” Drew said, “and I doubt he’s looked up since.”

  “I want to go with you,” Carrie said. “Back there. I want to know what’s happening and what you’re planning to do about it.” She caught a hard little breath. “So I can decide what I ought to do.”

  Madeline squeezed Drew’s hand again, a silent plea, and he squeezed back in acknowledgment.

  “If you like,” he told Carrie. “But it is rather late. If we’re going, we ought to go now. What about Bonnie?”

  “I’m going to take her to Mrs. Drummond.”

  The lights in the corridor and down the stairway were dim but serviceable. There was a brighter light at the large rolltop desk where Mrs. Drummond checked her guests in and out, and the woman was there herself, writing in a well-worn ledger. She looked not at all certain about the wisdom of the young ladies being out at all hours, but she took charge of the kitten and made no complaints.

  “Do you have a latchkey?” Drew asked quietly, mindful of the hour.

  Carrie and Madeline both nodded, and he led them out the front door and onto the street. It was little more than a mile back to the Hall, and it was good to see its lights there overlooking the sea.

  They entered through the side door, the one Drew used when he’d left, and made their way silently up to the library.

  “Still awake, old man?” Drew said, pushing open the door.

  Sprawled sideways with his legs hanging over the arm of an overstuffed chair, Nick looked up from his book. He’d switched from forage grasses to the latest Agatha Christie, Three Act Tragedy.

  “Oh, hullo, Drew. Madeline. Back again, are you?” he asked lazily. Then, seeing Carrie, he leapt to his feet, dropping the book and almost upsetting the table lamp beside him. “I didn’t expect you here this late. Is something wrong?”

  “Sit down, Fred Astaire.” Drew shoved him back into the chair. “We’ve got to regroup.”

  Madeline and Carrie sat on the sofa next to him, and Nick reached over to take Carrie’s hand. “Are you sure everything’s all right, sweetheart?”

  “Besides the village being overrun with German spies, you mean?” Carrie gave him a tremulous smile. “And Drew nearly being killed?”

  “What?”

  Drew looked up to see who had spoken. Joan was standing in the library doorway, one hand over her mouth.

  “What do you mean?” She glanced back into the corridor and then came into the room, shutting the door behind her. “Excuse my eavesdropping, but I heard someone down here and came to see what was happening.” Drew and Nick both stood, but Joan waved them back down and sat in the chair across from Drew. “What did you find out?”

  “I know MacArthur couldn’t have been the man you heard on the path in the woods Friday night,” Drew said.

  “But he must have been. His car was parked there.”

  “True, his car was parked where you saw it, and he was indeed at the cottage, but I happen to know your mother couldn’t have been there.”

  Joan merely stared at him.

  “Wait a minute,” Nick said, looking as dumbfounded as she did. “You’d better catch us both up.”

  Drew gave them a brief account of his adventure that night, again omitting the part about his being held at gunpoint.

  Nick whistled under his breath. “That does set everything on its head. No wonder you thought we ought to hammer it all out again with the new information taken into account.”

  “If Mr. MacArthur wasn’t on the path that night, who do you think it could have been?” Madeline asked Joan. “Is there anyone else you could have mistaken him for?”

  “I—I don’t know.” Joan looked at Drew, a touch of fear now mingling with her bewilderment. “Are you saying there’s someone else involved? You know I never liked Mr. MacArthur, but I couldn’t live with myself if something I said got an innocent person hanged.”

  Madeline patted her hand. “I don’t suppose you have any doubt about seeing your mother there, though.”

  Joan pressed her lips together. “I wish I could tell you otherwise, but I definitely saw her. I know she says she never left her room on Saturday, but she wasn’t there when I looked. Just ask Agnes.” She closed her eyes. “Oh, it’s just too awful. Father and then Mr. Barnaby and then—then poor Jamie.”

  “Don’t worry,” Madeline said. “We’ll figure it all out. There must be some explanation for all this.”

  “But what could it be besides that Mother and whoever she had helping her killed all three of them?”

  “Let’s go back to the man in the woods,” Drew told Joan. “What sort of voice did he have? What exactly did he say?”

  “I hardly remember now. It was a normal voice, nothing remarkable.”

  “Not any sort of accent, then?”

  “No, a normal English voice. He just told her to hurry home and not to let anyone see her.�
�� Joan got to her feet, both hands pressed to her temples. “Oh, I can’t think about this anymore. I can’t believe any of it still, but I know what I saw. I know what I heard.”

  Drew and Nick stood too, and Drew went to her. “I don’t want you to worry. As Madeline said, we’re going to sort this all out. Is there anything else you remember?”

  “I don’t know anything else.” Joan’s voice rose and cracked. “I saw her coming home that night, and I heard someone with her. I heard her arguing with my father over something.”

  “You said they were arguing about Mac,” Drew reminded her. “You were very sure.”

  She bit her lip. “Maybe I jumped to conclusions there, too,” she admitted. “Neither of them named names. I thought they meant Mac, but I see now I could have been wrong. I don’t know, I tell you. I just don’t know.”

  Drew couldn’t help but feel bad for her. He’d wanted all this while to prove that her mother was innocent, yet now it seemed all other options had been ruled out. It was, all in all, quite a shock.

  Madeline put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “It’s all right. You don’t have to think about it just now.”

  “And if it’s bad news about your mother,” Drew said, “we’ll see you through it. You won’t have to face it alone.”

  “No,” Madeline assured her. “You can count on us for anything.”

  “Thank you.” Joan looked as if she might cry, but then she took a deep, calming breath. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got a throbbing headache. I’d better go to bed.”

  Everyone told her good-night, and she hurried out of the room, pulling the door almost closed behind her.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Drew said, almost more to himself than to everyone else. “It just doesn’t fit. Why would Lady Louisa kill Barnaby? If he wanted to blackmail her, why would he tell the police about the new will? What good would killing him do her after that?”

  He remembered the man telling him about the proposed will and the rest of Lord Rainsby’s visit with him. “It’s hard to overlook the part Lord Rainsby’s considerable fortune could have played in everything that has happened.” But Lady Louisa had a considerable fortune of her own.