Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond

by Jayne Barnard

  “Soon’s it’s back from Launceston and the horses rested.” The man hawked into a conveniently placed spittoon and then, anticipating the next question, added, “Half hour, maybe more. I’ll fetch ye in time. Ladies’ parlour that way.” One heavy hand pointed to a passage that led away from the bar.

  Hornblower followed Maddie to a snug room, fitted out with heavy wooden furniture of surprisingly modern design. The armchairs bulged under bold tartan coverings, carved feet peeking from beneath pleated skirts. The lamps and tables bore ruffled covers, while incidental cushions were stuffed to bursting their buttons. The aged walls were brightened by prints of rosy-cheeked children playing in picturesque cottage gardens. A scattering of newspapers lay on the table. Hornblower, after examining his moustaches in the speckled mirror over the hearth, lowered his bulk onto a sofa and reached for the top paper in the stack, ignoring his new minion.

  Maddie prowled the small room, stretching her legs, until a maid came in with a tea tray and the day’s newspapers, fresh off the airship still floating above the inn. Accepting a cup and saucer, she refused an elderly biscuit, and reached for the top newspaper, a Kettle Conglomerate publication. If CJ had seen fit to print the articles she submitted last night, it would signify his forgiveness. But Hornblower grabbed the paper first, flipping through at speed until he found something he had apparently been seeking. He read silently and then flung the paper onto the floor.

  “Bah. They have again used the incorrect image. How many times have I, the greatest detective now in England, explained to them that the uniform of the Belgian police is no longer appropriate? How many times has Hercule Hornblower’s image been sent to them with a strongly worded letter? But no. They use the old image.” He stamped one weighty foot. The tea service shivered. As he sat back, he added with calm curiosity, “I wonder who told them I had taken the case of the baron and the missing mask. I would have done it myself but my moustaches needed to be trimmed before the journey.”

  He did not sound displeased at the publicity, only at the photograph. When his attention turned to the next paper in the fresh pile, Maddie collected the discarded one from the carpet and skimmed the article. Of course, no by-line, but the words were hers:

  Famed Belgian investigator Hercule Hornblower has been hired by Mrs. Midas-White, the American investor left most financially bereft by Baron Bodmin’s untimely end. His tasks are two: to learn the manner of the baron’s death, and to find the Eye of Africa mask if the baron had succeeded in returning it to England before his demise.

  [Here appeared Hornblower’s declaration from his meeting with Mrs. Midas-White on the previous afternoon, as close as Maddie could remember it, followed by a description of his fashionable overcoat and the attention he paid to his moustaches.]

  With the confidence of many solved cases behind him and the good will of Scotland Yard to uphold him, Hornblower is en route to Bodmin Manor in pursuit of Truth. Our reporter will send daily updates on his progress.

  Maddie returned to her teacup and drank thankfully. A pittance for the short item, to be sure, but any item that ended in “daily updates” signified CJ would continue to print whatever she could send him from Cornwall, so long as it related to the mystery of the baron’s death and was presented in a sufficiently sensationalist style to thrill the readers of his various broadsheets. Do well in this, and he might even assign her other mysteries when this one was solved.

  The maid, returning to collect the tea tray, shyly offered a tattered periodical to Maddie. “It’s a few months old now, Miss, but all the society gossip and a lovely article on the daring stockings ladies wore in Egypt last winter. Embroidered with snakes and other heathen patterns about the ankle, they say.” Since Maddie had written about the stockings herself, she thanked the girl and said she had better read some local doings instead, to familiarize herself with the place. “Well, Miss, if you will step upstairs with me, then, for we clips the best of the local news and sets them in frames. I’ll show you.”

  She led the way, not to the narrow stairs for the airship dock, but to a wider flight, built square around a supporting pillar. Up to a landing they went, on which the paneling could hardly be seen beneath crowded, cheap frames over yellowing newsprint.

  Maddie scanned the headlines while her guide chattered, and glimpsed a familiar face: Baron Bodmin himself, posed outside a mansion of local stone in the garb of an African explorer, from his pale khaki shooting jacket to his gleaming white pith helmet. The article below was boilerplate about his departure on a great quest for a wondrous treasure. A smaller photo showed his airship, the Jules Verne, bobbing above a slate-tiled roof, with the baron in his pith helmet and another man, his features indistinct, both waving from the cockpit. The caption beneath was lost under the edge of the frame.

  “This one.” Maddie pointed. “Do you know the name of that man with Baron Bodmin?”

  “Yes, Miss. That’s Captain, no, Colonel Muster, a great friend of the baron’s. He was there when the baron left, being in charge of shutting up the house for his friend. Just think: he slid down a single rope to the roof after this image was taken. A daring gentleman. He had medals.” She nodded solemnly.

  “You haven’t an article about the baron’s airship being found adrift?”

  “Oh, yes, Miss. We have a whole wall of them in the long bar. Every newspaper that came, my master clipped out the whole page. Bought special frames and all. The poor baron. What a sad end to his great adventure.”

  “Did he come here after his return, before he was found in the sea?” The girl worked that out, then shook her head. Ah, well, it was a long shot anyway.

  As Maddie turned away, the maid volunteered, “No. He only sent over a telegram.”

  “A telegram?” Maddie launched an even longer shot. “Do you know what it said?”

  “Course I do. It’s hanging up behind the desk in the lobby, being the last words of our own moor’s baron. He said, or wrote really—the housekeeper’s boy brought over the form—HOME STOP SUCCESS STOP COME AT ONCE TO ADVISE NEXT STEPS STOP STOP STOP.”

  Success?

  He had found the mask.

  What a coup if Maddie could prove the mysterious mask had reached England. She might even find it at Bodmin Manor. “When was this telegram sent? How many days before the airship was found drifting?”

  “Three?” the girl said hesitantly. “Is that important?”

  “Are you sure it was three?”

  She nodded. “The housekeeper’s boy, he brought me a note from my sweetheart, too, inviting me to a dance. Same day as airship blowed in, the dance were, and me with a new hem to set in between. All of three days and no mistake, Miss.”

  “Thank you. You have been most helpful.” Maddie slipped a coin into the maid’s hand. “If you’ll show me that telegram form?”

  Leading her down to the lobby, the girl took the framed telegraph form from the wall and held it out toward Maddie. On the hat, TD poked up his head, but the maid appeared not to see the small movement. Nor did she note several slight clicking sounds as Maddie peered closely at the framed flimsy.

  “Thank you,” said Maddie again, and watched her re-hang the frame. “What’s the next one over? About the wedding?” The maid handed it over. It was not a Kettle paper, but one that another consortium printed up for all the airship services in England.

  The Foghorn Afloat

  ROMANTIC AIRBOARD WEDDING

  On his winter’s travels on the Continent, Sir Ambrose Peacock lost an uncle but gained a bride. After a romantic meeting in Venice by the Grand Canal, the English knight lost no time in winning his fair lady’s hand. They were married aboard an airship en route to Paris, where they enjoyed an idyllic honeymoon until the news of Baron Bodmin’s deserted airship reached them.

  “I only regret my uncle is not here to meet my bride,” said Sir Ambrose, when the pair disembarked at the Jamaica Inn in Cornwall, the closest regular stop to Bodmin Manor. Sir Ambrose’s uncle, Baron Bodmin, was on a
quest for a fabled Nubian treasure when his airship was found adrift over the English Channel, bringing his newly-wedded heir in haste to the secluded family estate.

  In response to questions directed at his lovely new wife, Sir Ambrose replied for her. “Yes, I’m sure she will enjoy living in my isolated manor. I hope my uncle gets declared dead soon so I can sell off a few things.” As this reporter turned away, Sir Ambrose grasped a sleeve. “I don’t suppose you could lend me a fiver? My wife and I have excess baggage charges and the airship won’t unload our trunks until we pay up.”

  So Sir Ambrose had been in Paris when his uncle disappeared. Was he ruthless enough to secretly meet his uncle as the latter sailed over, and throw him to his death before returning to France with the fabled mask? And yet he’d been unabashed in claiming poverty to the reporter, though that could be a ruse to deflect suspicion. What manner of man was he? The accompanying photo showed a slender young dandy in the smartest of London waistcoats and an immense tan top-hat. Beside him, heavily veiled, stood a dainty lady whose hat barely reached his shoulder. The new bride.

  The face might be hidden, but Maddie was very sure she recognized that gown. She had described it in intimate detail for a column on clothing worn at Baron Bodmin’s farewell party in Cairo. She held the frame up where TD could click an image and then handed it back to the maid.

  “Can I send a telegram from here?”

  “Yes, Miss. Two bob for the form and whatever the letters adds up to.”

  “It will go right away?”

  “Yes, Miss. Soon’s the master steps back inside after telling them to keep the horses in harness.”

  “Thank you.” Maddie took the form, and a pencil, and set in the address line: Madame Taxus-Hemlock at Claridge Hotel London. Below that, concentrating on printing very neatly, she set down the words, “SARAH AT BODMIN AS LADY P STOP HELP STOP STOP STOP.”

  Exactly what help she wanted she could not have said in that shocked moment of recognition, but apart from the temptation to tackle the imposter on her own, she wanted more than anything to have someone else know the identity of Sir Ambrose Peacock’s shy new bride. After all, anything might happen on a lonely moor, and this time, it might not be the mysterious Sarah who vanished when exposure threatened.

  Chapter Twelve

  JAMAICA INN’S HORSE-DRAWN conveyance was not so much a carriage as a tarted-up farm cart. An aged loveseat was fixed to a dray, half sheltered from the elements by an accordion of oil-canvas canopy that creaked ominously whenever a rain-laden draught tugged at it. Before the cart had climbed the first rocky ridge, the carriage-robe laid across Maddie’s knees was chillingly damp. Her feet in their button boots rested on a warmed brick, but her hands, clenched under the robe, cooled rapidly. Hornblower seemed not to feel the cold, but that didn’t stop him complaining about the conveyance with every lurch. Why didn’t he pick this time to fall asleep?

  The clouds crept down, ever closer to the narrow track as it wound upward over the deserted moor. Where was Bodmin Manor exactly, on this mournful emptiness that shared its name?

  Along with this question, which grew more weighty as they crossed each uninhabited vale, another hung in the scales: would Sir Ambrose’s new bride, Lady Sarah, recognize Maddie as a threat the instant she arrived? Maddie had not yet determined how to act. The insult of the visiting card was a burning itch, demanding satisfaction. But to challenge one’s hostess was to destroy any hope of remaining incognito and retaining one’s job, not to mention that vital allowance. Would all the honour left in the world eventually give way to the need for money?

  That last was one question too many for Maddie. She pulled the lap robe higher and simply endured until yellow gate-lanterns glimmered through the dusk on the far side of yet another green valley. When at last they stopped in the lee of the gray, stone house, it took all her will to shift her freezing feet. If the lady of the manor offered her a poisoned cup now, she would drink it and gladly, if only it was warm.

  She was not put to that test, for Sir Ambrose, greeting them in the central hall, at once made his lady’s apologies. “She finds the air of Cornwall enervating, and keeps to her bed most days,” he said, his thin hands flapping helplessly. Duty done, he shot like a hunted fox into a doorway on the left, through which Maddie glimpsed a wall of bound books. The voices of at least one other man rumbled from within, asking about the new arrivals.

  The footman picked up an oil lamp and led Hornblower up an old oak stair that creaked under every footfall. Maddie followed, more than once snatching back her hand from a clinging cobweb, and trying not to think what might be falling onto her hat from the ancient tapestries that dangled from unseen rafters. Her bedchamber was no more salubrious. A small fire sulked on the hearth, belching earthy smoke into the room. She felt the bedding and determined to demand a warming pan from the next maid or housekeeper to put in an appearance.

  No-one appeared, however, and eventually she draped the bedding over the room’s two chairs to air and dry, as close to the fire as she dared leave it. Then she, with her black notebook, a hand-light, and TD in separate pockets, crept back down the stairs to explore the home of the legendary adventurer, Baron Bodmin.

  The library, for such it obviously was, was deserted under a few hanging lamps. Darkened and crackled portraits hung from fraying wire over the mantle and between the windows. Along the shelves, in the intervals of bound volumes, were curios brought from distant corners of the world: sextants and globes, chunks of ore from which mineral flecks gleamed, bone fish-hooks and ivory netsuke, carnival masks, and innumerable devices of gears, gauges, and lenses whose purposes she could not divine. From the used glasses and overflowing ashtrays, as well as the warmth of its fire, the room was in general use by the men in residence. A likely spot to overhear something of interest, then; she looked about for places where TD might be concealed amongst the clutter.

  A door near the hearth led to a gloomy parlour. Maddie switched on her hand light and, by its green glow, looked around. This room had a feminine décor, with cloisonné boxes (all empty), painted miniatures of children, and a workbasket containing more cobwebs than needlework. The small aluminum seam-crawlers in it were clearly of an earlier era, the thread spools on their backs too faded to determine their original colours. The room was dingier and much colder than the library. Clearly the new mistress of the house had not made it her own. And yet someone had been here recently, for there were signs of a heavy skirt trailing in the dust along the fireplace wall, and wider smudges near some of the furnishings. An archway led to the hall, shielded by a painted screen and velvet draperies too dirty to reveal their hue.

  Shivering in the chill damp, Maddie hurried back to the library for a quick search through the large writing desk. One drawer yielded blank telegram forms identical to the one framed at Jamaica Inn. She stuffed several into her notebook for future use. The other drawers held various items of stationery equipment, but nothing of interest. Wherever Baron Bodmin had kept his secrets, it was not this desk. When the dinner gong went, she hurried across the hall and found the dining room already occupied.

  By Colonel Muster, still wearing the suspiciously dark lenses she remembered from Egypt.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE COLONEL WAS not abroad “for his health,” as his family would doubtless prefer.

  Not dead by his own hand, as the regiment he lately disgraced would prefer.

  Not in London paying off his debts, as his landlady and others would prefer, although his natty attire implied he was not entirely without funds, or credit.

  He was simply hiding out from irate creditors at his old friend’s isolated manor.

  Had he been there the whole time since fleeing London?

  He did not recognize her, for he merely stood up until she was seated and then dropped into his chair again without the slightest attempt at conversation.

  Professor Plumb appeared soon after, unmistakable in his Oriental smoking gown and his fez from the Cai
ro medina. Behind him came Hercule Hornblower, holding forth on the subject nearest to his heart, namely his own comfort. Or the lack thereof, for there was much to complain of at Bodmin Manor. Once again, he fell asleep in mid-sentence. How had he ever made his name as a great detective, when he put his own comfort ahead of questioning and observing? Sir Ambrose joined them and apologized once more for his wife’s absence.

  Relieved of her worry over confrontation with Sarah and the resulting exposure of her Egyptian persona, which would make her investigations here impossible to pursue, Maddie savoured the aromas of roasted beef and a claret sauce being brought in by a sturdy housekeeper and the footman from earlier. No ceremony was observed; dishes passed from hand to hand without conversation, and she fell to eating as rapidly as the men did, waiting for a chance to break the ice, or for Hornblower to seize the opportunity to grill the men closest to the deceased baron. He said nothing, but took seconds of everything, while she seethed with impatience. Would that she could question them herself! When they’d all slaked their first hunger, she would make the attempt.

  She was thwarted. Hardly had she set down her utensils when the housekeeper, with a truncated curtsey, informed her coffee would be brought to her in the ladies’ parlour while the gentlemen were at their port. She rose, thinking there must be another parlour, but the woman led her across the hall to the dark, cold room and there left her, with a candelabra for company.

  Slipping through the library door, she placed TD on a cluttered shelf and whispered, “Listen for me. At your discretion.”

  As men’s voices sounded in the hall, she retreated to the parlour, drew the door mostly shut, and studied the swirls on the floor. It looked almost as if someone in a long skirt had knelt by that sofa and reached underneath, but for what purpose? Cleaning had definitely not been the objective. Nobody had cleaned here for many years.