by Joan Smith
As there was no hope of catching him, I let him show himself out. “What do you make of that?” I asked Auntie.
“Very mysterious, to be sure. We didn’t get much out of him, did we?”
“He knows even less than we do,” I replied. “He didn’t even know Papa’s body was taken to London. He seemed upset to hear it. I wonder why.”
“Horse Guards,” Smythe announced.
Mrs. Lovatt asked, “What’s that you say, Smythe?”
“Depew—he was wearing the prince’s buttons on his jacket. Yaller lining as well. He’s with the Horse Guards.”
“Is he indeed? He did not say so.”
“Stands to reason he wouldn’t. I wonder he didn’t change his jacket to call on you. Course, he didn’t know I would be here,” he added, to answer his own question. Provincial ladies, I assumed he meant, would not realize the significance of the prince’s buttons. Nor did we. The two questioning faces tacitly demanded an explanation. “Thing is,” he said, “the man’s a spy.” Two gasps rent the air. “An English spy,” he hastened to assure us. “Horse Guards handle intelligence for the war. Coincidence, I daresay. Your father had nothing to do with the war. Anyone might fancy pigeons; even a spy can have a hobby.”
“I thought a spy would be more dashing,” I said. An image of Lord Fairfield darted into my head. Somewhere at the back of my mind there lurked an image of Snoad as well, but it was soon overshadowed by my new noble acquaintance. “This becomes more confusing by the moment,” I said, and drew a deep sigh. “Let us go out for a breath of air. Is your headache better, Auntie?”
“The tea helped. A breath of air might finish the job. The Royal Pavilion is too far. We’ll stroll along the Marine Parade and enjoy the fresh breeze.”
“I’ll nip along to see the constable,” Smythe said.
Aunt Lovatt got him the parcel holding Papa’s jacket and shirt. We both donned our pelisses and bonnets. It was as we were leaving that we discovered the key to the suite was not in the room. We had to stop at the desk to get it, and I returned above to lock the door. Bunny also had to inquire at the desk for the route to the constable’s office.
Eventually we were all ready to leave. The gusty breeze outside was not only fresh but chilling. A short walk was enough to turn Mrs. Lovatt’s headache to a fear of taking a chill. Before we were blown to pieces, we returned at a rapid gait, with the wind pulling at our skirts and bonnets.
“Have a lie-down before dinner, Auntie,” I suggested when we recovered the comfort of the hotel. “I’ll wait to hear what Bunny learns from the constable.”
“I’ll do that. And I’ll light the fire, too. I noticed it was laid, ready for lighting.”
I unlocked the door and we entered by the saloon. It was not until Mrs. Lovatt went into the bedroom that anything irregular was noticed. She called to me in a hollow voice. “Heather, come and have a look at this.”
I darted in, thinking to see some clue relating to my father’s death. I saw Auntie staring in dismay at our open cases, with our clothes strewn about the room. We were both too shocked to be angry yet. “What on earth happened?”
“We have had a visitor,” Mrs. Lovatt said. She began picking up garments and examining them.
“Has anything been stolen?” I demanded, racing for my jewelry box. It contained a string of pearls and a matching ring. The box had been opened, but both were intact. Mrs. Lovatt had not brought any jewelry.
“An odd sort of thief. He didn’t take anything,” I said. “Should we report it to the desk?”
Mrs. Lovatt sank on the side of the bed to collect her wits. “I dread to do it, we’ve been such a nuisance to that nice man already.”
“I think we must. The door had not been pried open. In fact, it was locked when we returned. Someone besides us has a key.”
“Lord Fairfield!” Mrs. Lovatt exclaimed. “He would have been given a key when he hired the room.”
“You cannot think he would have done this!” I scoffed.
“Someone did it. Why did he want your father’s room in the first place?”
“He just wanted the best rooms the hotel had. I’ll ring for Soames,” I said. I didn’t believe for a moment that Lord Fairfield would be so savage as to have done this foul deed. It seemed to me more like the work of the mysterious Sir Chauncey Depew. Obviously it had something to do with Papa’s death.
Chapter Five
In five minutes Soames was at the door. “Lord Fairfield’s valet turned their key in at the desk before you left for your walk, Miss Hume,” he told me when I put the question to him. “I hope there has not been any more ... trouble?” he asked, sniffing the air for gunpowder.
“Someone entered while we were out. I feel he used a key, as the lock is not damaged.”
His white brow pleated in concern. “There is one key missing,” he said. “Your father’s. The hotel never recovered it.”
“Then it stands to reason whoever killed Papa has the key, and came to search our belongings.”
“This is a fine how-do-you-do,” Mrs. Lovatt declared, tossing up her hands in despair. “We might be shot in the back like your father before the night is over. We must change rooms at once.”
Soames had a small fit of hysterics. I cannot imagine why he was so eager for our troublesome patronage. He promised to have the locks changed immediately. He was very sorry for our inconvenience. In fact, he said we might stay as long as we wished at no expense. But only for three days, as Lady Eileen somebody had hired the suite for that date.
A free suite was not despised by Mrs. Lovatt, nor by myself. She allowed herself to be talked into remaining. Soames left, and while Auntie and I were still discussing the matter, Bunny Smythe returned bearing his bundle, and wearing an expression of complete mystification.
“What did you learn?” I asked eagerly.
“Demmed odd,” he said, shaking his head. “The constable had no notion of any trouble at the Royal Crescent. The murder was never reported.”
“Not reported!” I gasped. “But that is impossible! How can we hope to catch the villain if the police don’t even know the murder took place?”
“Demmed odd,” Bunny repeated. “I had a word with Soames when I came in. Asked why he didn’t report it. Orders from Whitehall, he said. There was an officer from the Horse Guards here. He wanted the whole thing hushed up. Depew, obviously.”
I just stared at him in disbelief. Poor Bunny had made a botch of it. “What on earth had Papa to do with the Horse Guards?”
“He had something to do with them right enough. I had to get a tad rusty with Soames, but I learned something else as well. Your father wasn’t paying for his own accommodations. The order for the room and the money in cash both came from London. Explains why he had such a gaudy suite. Mean to say—he wasn’t footing the bill.”
My mouth felt dry. This talk of the Horse Guards and letters from London reeled around in my brain. “Are you saying Papa was a spy, Bunny?” Bad enough that spies were such boring creatures as Depew. Now it seemed my own father was one of them.
“I’m not saying he was a spy. Not saying he wasn’t. Just saying he didn’t pay for his own rooms, and the Horse Guards took a keen interest in his doings.”
“I don’t see why they would, unless he was helping them.”
“No more do I,” he allowed. “Gracefield is a good spot to spy from. Right on the coast. Dover, just a few miles north, is a regular den of spies and smugglers.”
The English had no need for information of doings at Hythe, however. They already knew what troops and ships were standing by in case of invasion by Bonaparte’s troops. I soon discovered a less flattering reason for the interest of the Horse Guards. Was it possible Papa was a spy for the Frenchies? Anyone could have arranged for the suite from London. I could not believe it. “Why remove his body to London?” I asked.
“And why did someone steal his pigeon cages?” Bunny added. “Seems to me they was all looking for something. Don�
�t see why they couldn’t look for it here. Unless they was trying to hush the whole thing up.”
“It almost seems it is us they were trying to fool,” I said angrily. “They had Papa tell us he was going to London. Perhaps that is why they took his body there, to get the death certificate signed by a London doctor, and have a London firm deliver the body home, pretending he died of a heart attack. We never would have tumbled to it if it were not for receiving Papa’s case from the hotel here. That is where the Horse Guards slipped up.”
“The hotel slipped up,” Bunny said. “Hotel was told to tidy things up, pack the duds, and forward ‘em to London. Some junior clerk who didn’t know the ins and outs of it exceeded his office. He checked to see where Mr. Hume was from, and thought there was some mistake, so he sent the clothes to Gracefield. Fat was in the fire. Shirt and jacket riddled with bullet holes. Ipso after the facto, he was shot. No point denying your father was here.”
“That must be illegal! Lying to us, and conniving to conceal evidence from the police.”
“Plain as the nose on your face they’ve been lying through their teeth with all this going on behind our backs.”
When I had sorted out this anatomical jungle, I agreed.
“Soames says the Horse Guards was furious,” Bunny said.
“I expect it is Sir Chauncey Depew who was in charge,” I decided. “He didn’t seem that bright to me.”
“Close as an oyster,” Bunny averred. “Not to say he ain’t sharp as a tack. They choose those invisible fellows on purpose so you won’t notice them. I mentioned Depew to Soames. He didn’t recognize him— not the chap who ordered Hume’s body shipped to London, he says. Not that I believe him.”
“We ought to have a word with Depew, and make him tell us what is going on,” Mrs. Lovatt said, with a commanding eye at Bunny.
Smythe agreed to go below and learn what room Depew had taken. He returned in a moment with another unsatisfactory message. “Depew ain’t staying at the hotel. Might be putting up elsewhere in Brighton, or might be going back to London. Point non plus—for the nonce. Could always write him a letter.”
“I was never so vexed in my life,” I declared. “What should we do?”
“I could ankle along to a few other hotels and see if I can find him,” Smythe offered.
“Such a lot of unpleasant chores we are saddling you with. Bunny.”
“A pleasure,” he said gamely, and straggled up from his chair to brave the winds once more.
Mrs. Lovatt and I exchanged a questioning, lost look. “I feel as if I had fallen into a penny novel,” I said.
My aunt was silent a moment, thinking. At length, she spoke. “I don’t believe a word of all these marvelous tales. Harold was no more a spy than I am.”
“How can you not believe, with all the bizarre things that are going on?”
“I don’t like to be the one to disillusion you, Heather, but the fact is, Mrs. Mobley lives in Brighton.”
“Surely she went to Ireland!”
“Oh yes, she went to Ireland, and remained all of a month. She found it too quiet. I heard the whole story from Mrs. Gibbons, who had it of Mrs. Mobley’s brother’s cook. I never told Harold. You may imagine why. It seems he found out by himself.”
“He would never go back to her after she killed Mama,” I exclaimed.
“Don’t be a goose. That had nothing to do with your mother’s death. If he would see her while his wife was alive, there is no reason to stick at seeing her after she was dead, and he was alone.”
“He was not alone! He had us.”
“And Snoad,” she added angrily.
“He showed extremely poor taste in his choice of the ‘other woman.’ And this is where she ended up, in Brighton?”
“I wish she had stayed in Ireland, as she was supposed to. Her being here would explain this ludicrous set of rooms Harold hired. Just what that Mobley creature would like.”
“It doesn’t explain why the Horse Guards or anyone else should pay for the rooms.”
“We have only a hotel clerk’s word for that. They lied to us about everything else. Soames is trying to wrap the mess up in clean linen, to save your feelings,” my aunt decided.
I just looked at her. “If Papa was a spy for his country, it is hardly a case of dirty linen, Auntie. Remember, the Horse Guards took Papa’s body to London.”
“But was it for his country, or for the French?” she asked, in a rhetorical spirit. I was dreadfully depressed to hear her state my own worst fear aloud. “I don’t say your father was guilty. I believe he was Snoad’s dupe. That is what I think.”
“Surely not! Snoad was devoted to Papa.” Yet I had never thought so until last night, when Snoad had changed his whole personality so drastically that he had seemed a different man entirely. Had he done it to cozen me?
“Before you call me a fool, stop and think a minute,” my aunt continued. “When did your father’s interest in pigeons run out of all control? When Snoad moved in. Before that, it was just a little hobby. Once Snoad took over, your father suddenly began receiving all manner of strange callers. It was Snoad who arranged for customers, you must know.”
“He told me he didn’t know who Papa was coming to see in Brighton!”
“Of course he told you that, ninny. Now that he’s managed to get your father killed, he wants to distance himself from the business. Birds were always arriving and leaving at a great rate once Snoad moved in. He was using Harold’s racers to deliver messages across the Channel to France. The birds delivered to the loft by those strange callers would be from France, to return bearing information. Snoad would keep an eye on the coast, and send back word of what troops were building up. We have any number of military bases in the neighborhood. The Gracefield birds the Frenchies took away would be sent back with requests for what information they required.”
“But if Papa only came to Brighton to visit Mrs. Mobley ... and why should the Horse Guards pay for his rooms?” I asked, trying to make sense of the senseless.
“We don’t know that they did. Someone paid by cash enclosed in a letter, is what Soames said. It could have been the Frenchies. Don’t think there aren’t Frenchies in London.”
“Why did Papa bring pigeons then, and why was he killed? He always told us he was going to his Pigeon Society meetings in London.”
“Aye, but where he was coming was to Brighton. He discovered in some manner that Mobley was here. She wrote him, no doubt. The pigeon meetings were his pretext to get away and visit Mobley. He knew I would have something to say if I learned he was seeing that creature. I daresay Snoad just took advantage of the visits. He would be happy enough to have Harold do some of the business away from home. It diverted suspicion from himself—from Snoad I mean. Snoad might have been concealing messages in with the birds in some manner. If the Horse Guards caught on to it, they would have assumed your father was the culprit, and had him assassinated.”
“I hope Bunny finds Depew, for there are a dozen questions I want to ask him,” I said, trying to figure out if my aunt had solved the case, or only complicated it further. Depew was the one who could tell us whether Papa was spying for England, or against it.
“I almost hope he does not,” Mrs. Lovatt said. “As things stand, we have only questions to worry us.”
“I should prefer to have those questions answered, Auntie. Papa must have wondered why he was getting his room free.”
Mrs. Lovatt made no reply, but her worried frown suggested that she was pondering the possibility of Papa’s deeper involvement in the spying scheme. After a long moment she said, “Harold always had a reckless streak in him. He was used to letting the smugglers land at his cove. It worried your mama to death.”
And smugglers from France, presumably, might easily provide a line to French spies. Snoad had a foreign air about him. Not in his speech, but his coloring was Gallic. Was there not a sort of French passion in his talk of the pigeons the other night as well? We English are more phle
gmatic.
We were interrupted by a discreet tap at the door. I felt as if a murderer might be standing outside, ready to pounce in and shoot us. My aunt admitted the caller. My spirits soared to hear the polite accents of Lord Fairfield.
He entered smiling. His eyes swerved at once in my direction, where they seemed to find considerable pleasure. “I hope I am not intruding, ma’am,” he said, with an exquisite bow.
“Not at all. Pray have a seat, milord.”
He waited until Mrs. Lovatt was seated before taking a chair himself. “Mr. Soames has just been telling me the shocking news of your room being broken into. I came to assure myself you are unharmed,” he said. Using this excuse, his darting eyes examined me minutely. His especial concern appeared to focus on my bosom and ankles.
“Indeed we are fine,” I assured him. “We were out at the time, and did not discover the break-in until our return.”
“My valet took the key down as soon as I left you. No doubt someone picked it up from the desk and came to see if he might find a purse or jewelry lying about.”
“If that was his aim, he was disappointed,” Mrs. Lovatt replied, pretending to accept this taradiddle.
Regarding Lord Fairfield, I was much struck with his noble mien and broad shoulders. Such a gentleman, from the highest walk of life, would have access to information that was denied ladies of mere gentility. I felt a strong urge to throw all my troubles on his shoulders and ask his help. If there lurked at the back of my mind that a damsel in distress customarily won a proposal from her savior, I did not acknowledge it at the time, even to myself.
When Lord Fairfield inclined his head toward me and said, in a very concerned way, “Is something troubling you, ma’am? You look worried,” I was within ames’ ace of opening my budget to him.
Auntie, perhaps sensing my mood, said, “We are just tired from the trip, milord.”
He rose at once. “It is unconscionable of me to be imposing on you at this time. There is a matter I wished to discuss with you, but it must wait till later.”
