A Tall Dark Stranger

by Joan Smith

  “It couldn’t be done,” Lollie confirmed. “It’s easier to slide down than clamber out. I know, to my sorrow.”

  “He’d need a good stout rope,” Robert said, “but I doubt he took it out that way. He would have put the cap back on the coal chute opening if he had. I fancy he climbed up the cellar stairs and left via the kitchen. I noticed there was no lock on the door leading from the kitchen to the cellar.”

  “No, there isn’t,” Lollie said, looking sheepish.

  There used to be one, but Lollie had climbed down the coal chute the week it was installed and couldn’t get back out. Mama had spent hours looking for him. He had been locked in the cellar. It was a washing day and Cook had been in the wash house, so she hadn’t heard him knocking and calling for hours. Mama had had the lock removed then and it had never been replaced.

  “Let’s confirm our theory,” Robert said. “We’ll check the stairs and kitchen for signs of coal dust or dirt. But why didn’t Leo Forten see him when he left? Perhaps Forten is in on it. What sort of fellow is he?”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t think he’s that sort,” Lollie said uncertainly. “Though now that you mention it, he does spend a deal of time at the Boar’s Head. Lord Harry might have been keeping an eye on him.”

  They ran ahead to question Forten. I dallied behind, checking for dirt and coal dust along the way. While they were gone, I spotted several black fingerprints on the wainscoting of the kitchen walls. Cook would not have let her girls leave the kitchen in that state.

  Within two minutes the men were back, carrying an inert Leo Forten. Robert held him by the shoulders, Lollie carried his feet. They deposited him on the settle in the corner, where Cook takes her afternoon rest in the winter when she doesn’t want to leave her warm kitchen.

  I feared the man was dead until Lollie glanced up and said in disgust, “He’s drunk as a Dane. We told him not to drink while on duty. It’s what comes of using amateurs.” His scowl suggested that he had been an agent all of his eighteen years.

  With such comments, and taking into account that both he and Robert had their faces and hands smeared with dirt, it was hard to take them seriously. But when Robert spoke, his voice held such authority that I could take him seriously at least. Indeed, I was impressed with his taking charge so effectively. I could well imagine him leading his men into battle in Spain.

  “Have a look around for the bottle, Talbot, and let me know if it’s from your cellar,” he said.

  Lollie darted out. Robert turned to me. “Was it a good party, Amy?” he asked.

  “No, it was very boring.”

  He smiled in satisfaction. “It has been my experience that the company makes the party. Dare I hope you feel the same?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me who you really are?”

  “I really am Robert Renshaw.”

  “I don’t mean your name!”

  “The one who reports a murder is always considered a suspect,” he said, rather playfully. “Then the added coincidence of Lollie’s stumbling on to the money and its disappearance ...”

  “You actually thought we were thieves and murderers!”

  “Just as you thought I was,” he reminded me.

  “That’s different. You’re ... were ... a stranger.”

  “So were you a stranger to me, at first. Later, I was curious to see if you loved me enough to believe in me even when you had some reason to suspect I was dishonest. Call me an egoist or a romantic. Or just call me yours.” Then he happened to glance in the little mirror over the sink that Inez had installed when she took up with George and saw his black face.

  He smiled at the mirror and turned to me, with his white teeth flashing in his black face, “You really must care to keep a straight face while I prattle of love, looking like this.” He looked just fine to me.

  Before I could say so, Lollie was back with an empty wine bottle. “This was in the lilac bushes outside the kitchen door. It ain’t one of mine,” he announced. “The label’s been soaked off, but I haven’t seen one just like this before. It’s paler than most wine bottles.”

  Robert took the bottle, tilted it into his palm, and tasted the dregs. “Drugged,” he said, and examined the bottle carefully. It looked like an ordinary wine bottle to me, perhaps a bit lighter than our own.

  “Ask Forten where he got it,” I said.

  “We shall, as soon as he comes to,” Robert replied. He went to the sink, got a glass of water, and poured it over Forten’s face. Forten spluttered a moment before settling back into a peaceful snooze.

  “We shan’t learn anything from him for a few hours,” Robert said. “We can’t wait that long to get on with the mission. Now let me see. Our thief gave Forten the drugged wine. Forten was guarding this side of the house, which is also the side where the access to the coal chute is. The thief let himself into the cellar via the coal chute, brought up the bags, and left by the back door, setting it to lock behind him.”

  “He must know Forten can identify him,” I said. “It seems he doesn’t care if we know who he is.”

  “That suggests he plans to take off and not return,” Robert said. “He could get halfway around the world on fifty thousand pounds. Still, having to leave the area pretty well eliminates any landowners,” he added, not entirely happily.

  “That lets Beau off the hook,” Lollie said to me.

  “And Maitland,” I added.

  Robert smirked. There is no other word for the smug expression that seized his lips. He was happy I had my old favorite, Maitland, in mind for the suspect.

  “Whoever he is, he must have made a few trips,” Lollie said.

  They finally examined the floor, where traces of fresh earth and coal dust were visible, though they didn’t stand out on the deep maroon oilcloth floor covering, another of Mama’s innovations. I pointed out the finger marks on the wainscoting as well.

  Robert reached out to them. I noticed his fingers were a good eight inches higher than the fingerprints on the wall.

  “The fellow was bent under the weight of the bags and touched the wall for support,” Lollie explained to me.

  “Perhaps,” Robert said, massaging his jaw with his fingers. When the fingers came away soiled, he remembered his darkened face and drew out a handkerchief to wipe away the dirt. Lollie left his on.

  I examined the fingerprints on the wainscoting. They were even lower than where my fingers touched the wall, about an inch lower. They were small, more or less the size of my own. Robert took my hand and placed it over the fingerprints. I felt a rush of warm feeling shoot up my arm at his touch. It was perfectly obvious, however, that Robert’s mind was all on business.

  “These might almost be a lady’s fingerprints,” he said.

  “The servant girls don’t bring up the coal for the stove,” Lollie said. “That’s George’s job, and he’s nearly as tall as you. His hands are large.”

  “Curious,” Robert murmured. A frown creased his brow. “There aren’t any criminal midgets in the community, I suppose?”

  “Only Isaiah,” I replied. “Good Lord!”

  “What is it?” he exclaimed.

  “I saw Isaiah lurking in the yard when I was dressing for the party. You don’t suppose that scamp had a hand in this?”

  “Where does he live?” Robert asked.

  “With his father, in that flint cottage across from the church. The house goes with the job of gravedigger and graveyard maintenance man.”

  “How would Isaiah know the money was there?”

  “He might have seen it being put in the cellar. He’s a regular busybody.”

  “You can’t sneeze without Isaiah knowing it—and stealing your handkerchief,” Lollie said.

  “Isaiah, eh?” Robert said. His eyes narrowed in a way Lollie would approve of. “It’s a possibility. We’ll look into it, but first we’ll try to pick up a trail outside. Does Isaiah have a donkey or a dog cart?”

  “He travels on shank’s mare,” I told him.

 
‘Then he’s only a tool at most,” Robert said. “Perhaps not even that. I have another idea who might have left those finger marks on the wall.” He looked at the fingerprints, then at me, as if measuring the absent villain against my five feet and five inches. “No, don’t ask. I shan’t malign any of your friends until I have at least an iota of proof.”

  He massaged his chin again, then said, “Amy, I’m sorry to disturb your household, but would you mind rousing Cook? I want to know what time she retired and if she noticed anything—”

  “She was just going to bed when I left the back door to join the militiamen around eleven,” Lollie said. “She hadn’t noticed anything amiss.”

  “So the theft occurred between eleven and three-thirty.” Robert looked at me. “Did anyone leave the party early, Amy?”

  “No, except for Lollie, we all left around midnight. Plenty of time for any of the guests to have done it between twelve and three-thirty, though.”

  “Only a child, or a woman, could have wiggled down that coal chute,” Lollie said.

  “And a woman could scarcely have hauled those bags upstairs without making a racket as they thumped from stair to stair,” I pointed out.

  “Not without help,” Robert agreed. “Of course, once she was inside, what was to prevent her from admitting her helper via the back door, since Forten was unconscious?” He went over and examined Forten, who was now snoring stertorously.

  “We’ll need lanterns, Talbot,” Robert said, turning back to us. Lollie flew to obey the chief. “We’ll try to pick up the trail from the back door. The mount would have been several hundred yards away to avoid detection. I fancy the bags were hauled to the mount. That took a strong back,” he added, frowning. “I wouldn’t have thought ...”

  We waited. When he didn’t expand on that curious suggestive statement, I said, “Wouldn’t have thought what?”

  “I think Renshaw means one smallish person couldn’t have done it,” Lollie said, rooting out two lanterns from the shelf of the cupboard.

  “Exactly,” Robert agreed. I didn’t think that was what he meant at all. He had already explained that the smaller person could have admitted a helper by the back door. He saw my questioning look and said, “I thought the attempt would occur during the Murrays’ party while the family was out of the house.”

  “But all our suspects were at the party,” I said.

  Robert nodded, frowning. He sent Lollie for McAdam, who was apprised of the situation and had nothing to add but that he should never have trusted Leo Forten. He was a deal too fond of the bottle, but he had never drunk on the job before. As it was too late to do anything about it, Robert just took a deep breath and said anyone could make a mistake.

  McAdam volunteered to remain in charge of the operation at Oakbay while Robert and Lollie tried to pick up the trail outside. No one mentioned where I should be in the meanwhile. I knew well enough that the gentlemen wouldn’t allow me to go with them. As nothing was said one way or the other, I flew upstairs, got my oldest pelisse, changed my kid slippers for walking shoes, and sneaked out the front door.

  I followed behind Robert and Lollie until they were well beyond the house, at which time I made my presence known. They had either to let me join them or accompany me home. I soon convinced them that speed was of the essence. And besides, I had brought a poker with me, so I felt perfectly safe.

  “That’s what we thought about the money.” Robert scowled. “Stick close to me. That’s an order.”

  To ensure my compliance, he grasped my hand, the one not holding the poker, and we examined the earth for signs of disturbance. The earth at the back door is clay, packed hard by centuries of footsteps. An elephant could have dragged a house over that clay without leaving much in the way of a mark, so we were unsure which direction to take.

  “This is hopeless,” I said. “We can’t possibly find any traces before morning. I think we should go back to the house and think about this.”

  “You do that,” Robert said at once. “This is no place for a lady.”

  “What will you do in the meanwhile?”

  “Catch the thief,” he said complacently. As he obviously knew a good deal more than he was saying, I decided to remain with His Majesty’s agents.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Do you know where you’re going, Robert?” I ventured to inquire after we had “tracked” through the meadow quite at random for the better part of half an hour. Tracking was the word he and Lollie used.

  It was much too dark to see any tracks a person might have left in the tall grass. The moon was obscured by a slow-moving patch of clouds and we didn’t use the lanterns to avoid being spotted. One or other of the agents would squat from time to time, peer into the grass, and exclaim, “This way!” with great certainty, but invariably the “track” petered out to an untrampled stretch of rank grass.

  “Why do we not have Isaiah hauled out of bed and quiz him?” I suggested. “Those were surely his finger marks on the wainscoting. It’s exactly the sort of thing he’d do.”

  “Rob a government caravan of fifty thousand pounds, you mean?” Robert asked ironically. “A bright lad!”

  “No, I mean sell his services to whomever did steal the money. He’s involved at this stage. He knows something is all I meant.”

  I might as well not have spoken. “This way!” rang out again, and we were off in the direction of the water meadow. I was convinced the gentlemen hadn’t a notion what they were doing but only wanted to be doing something.

  “Surely they wouldn’t throw the money into the water?” I said. “Unless they were abandoning it... But in that case, why bother to remove it from the cellar?”

  “Not the water meadow, the shepherd’s hut,” Lollie deigned to inform me.

  “They’ve already used it once.”

  “What’s to stop them from using it again?”

  “The fact that you found it the first time.”

  We hurried along to the shepherd’s hut, where we found things exactly as we had left them some days ago. There was no fresh mound of straw to look under. The place had obviously not been used at all, even for a romantic tryst.

  I remembered the blue ribbon Robert had found there and said, “Did you ever discover whether that length of blue ribbon was available in Woking, Windsor, or Farnborough, Robert?”

  “Beau checked it out for me. It wasn’t available in any of those towns. The drapers think it came from London. Maitland might have bought it for one of his, er, friends.”

  “So he might. Or your London friend, Mrs. Murray, might have been wearing it. She wears a great many ribbons.” Too many, but I didn’t say that.

  “She also has a pretty parlormaid, Annie. I noticed Annie rolling her eyes at Maitland at the party. I expect Annie gets some of Mrs. Murray’s discards.”

  He was only teasing me that my erstwhile tendre was flirting with servants at the shepherd’s hut. My mind was going in a different direction. Mrs. Murray was not only a flirt; she also gambled and not for chicken stakes.

  Might she have fallen into debt in London? When you came down to it, Murray was the only one in the neighborhood who knew for certain that the money was being shipped and his wife might have discovered it from him. Or indeed Murray himself might be involved.

  Something was niggling at the back of my mind, but I didn’t think it had to do with ribbons. Something else about Mrs. Murray—and Isaiah. Fifi! That was it.

  “That rascal of an Isaiah found her for me,” Mrs. Murray had said. “Well, ‘found’ is one word for it. It wouldn’t surprise me much if he lured Fifi away and hid her for a day to increase the reward. I know she smelled of the pigsty when she was brought back, and the Smoggs keep a few pigs out back. He’s sharp as a tack, that Isaiah. He’ll amount to something one of these days if he isn’t thrown into Newgate first.” She had smiled in approval of his criminal cunning.

  She knew he was clever and amenable to criminal activity. He had been loitering about Oakbay las
t night.

  While I brooded, Lollie had climbed up on the roof of the shepherd’s hut to survey the countryside, either for hiding places or signs of criminal activity. The clouds had moved away from the moon, greatly improving visibility.

  I hesitated to mention my suspicions to Robert lest he think me a jealous female, but as the Murrays were leaving in the morning, time was of the essence. I took a deep breath, and after reminding him of Isaiah’s presence at Oakbay last night, I told him about Fifi and Mrs. Murray’s gambling.

  He considered it for a moment, then said, “The ribbon, I think, is an irrelevance involving romance, not robbery.”

  “I wasn’t referring to the ribbon.”

  “Not directly, but it did occur to me that the lady’s carrying on with Maitland might have aroused your ire and caused an unconscious dislike that—”

  “Don’t be an ass!” I scoffed. “I’m not jealous, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “You did seem mighty fond of Maitland.”

  “I was also fond of sugarplums and dolls once upon a time. One outgrows those childish fascinations.”

  “Good,” he said with a little smile, and squeezed my fingers. “But about Isaiah, Mrs. Murray is not the only one who realizes he’d sell his soul to Satan for a quid. The whole parish knows it. I have trouble envisaging a lady behind a scheme of this sort. Odd your suspicions don’t spread to include Mr. Murray.” His quizzical smile suggested that I was jealous of Marie and trying to blacken her character.

  I rescued my fingers from his grasp. “I believe a female is quite capable of larceny without a man’s help, but in fact it had occurred to me that they might be in it together,” I said, refusing to acknowledge his taunt.

  “This sudden dart to London when no real crisis exists is interesting. The government has been discussing the election for a month. The cabinet will decide the date. They wouldn’t call the members back only for that.”

  I felt a sense of urgency building. The money had vanished from my brother’s house. If it was not found, there would always be a suspicion that we had managed to hide it. I could almost feel the neighbors’ eyes squinting at us every time we bought a new gown or had a room painted. “I wonder where the money is coming from?” they would ask in that insinuating way.