The Treasure at Poldarrow Point (An Angela Marchmont Mystery)

by Benson, Clara

  There was no light under Angela’s door, so Barbara judged that she must be asleep too. She tiptoed down the stairs, being careful to avoid the creaky step halfway down, then let herself out through the front door and ran down the path and out through the gate. It was dark now, the last few streaks of mid-blue having disappeared from the sky and been replaced by a deep indigo studded with glimmering white. The moon was almost full, and Barbara found she had no need of her torch as she set off briskly in the direction of the Hotel Splendide, whose windows and terraces glowed brightly, rendering it visible from miles around. As she drew nearer, the sound of drifting music grew louder, and she began to distinguish the sound of voices chattering and laughing, and the clatter of china. She stood in the shadows at the edge of the hotel terrace, and saw that all the doors had been thrown wide open on this warm evening. Waiters and waitresses bustled about the restaurant, clearing away the plates of the last few stray diners, while farther along she could just get a glimpse through the outer doors of the ball-room, from where the music was emanating. Barbara crept closer, keeping out of the light, and watched as couple after couple whirled past, some in time with the music, others less so. The noise was very loud now and she watched attentively, wondering whether she had perhaps left it too late and whether her informant had misled her.

  Although Angela did not know it, Barbara had spent much of that day at the hotel, doing a little investigating on her own account. She had long ago decided that the writer of the anonymous letters was after the necklace, and had seen no evidence since then to prove her wrong. Barbara intended to find out who it was. She started from the assumption that the culprit did not belong to Tregarrion—not an unreasonable deduction, in her view, since the necklace had been in the house for one hundred and fifty years and yet the letters had begun arriving only recently. Someone, therefore, had got wind of the treasure and had come to Tregarrion in the hope of finding it—and where should they stay if not the hotel?

  Her first step had been to find out more about the Dorseys, who she had decided were the chief suspects, since: 1) they knew about Angela’s visits to Poldarrow, and 2) they were known to wander about late at night and might easily therefore have been responsible for the attack on Clifford Maynard. Accordingly, she had spent the morning hanging around the restaurant until she spotted a likely new ally: the boy who collected the glasses was an observant young fellow of fourteen with too much time on his hands, who was only too happy to pass a few minutes showing off his superior knowledge to his new friend. He told her that the Dorseys were well known in the hotel for taking all they could get and being mean with their tips. They were among the latest at breakfast every day, and the last to leave the ball-room at night. After that, they usually went out—he couldn’t say where—and goodness knows it wasn’t as though there were many places to go around here, but he had seen them several times leaving the hotel at eleven or twelve o’clock, and who could say at what time they returned?

  Barbara intended to discover if she could where the Dorseys went on these mysterious night jaunts of theirs, and planned to follow them when—if—they left the hotel that evening. First, however, she had to find out where they were. Keeping to the shadows, lest someone see her and send her back home to bed, she crept closer to the open door of the ball-room. A low wall ran around the edge of the terrace and she crouched down behind it and peered over the top. From her position she had a good view of the comings and goings inside the great hall. She could just see the orchestra as they puffed and plucked and hammered at their instruments, faces shining and brows wrinkled in concentration. The crowd was gradually thinning, as guests left the room in twos and threes, and headed for their rooms giggling or yawning, and there were a number of empty tables, which made it a little easier to distinguish faces.

  Barbara gazed intently through the door, but could not see the Dorseys anywhere, either on the dance floor or sitting at a table. Of course, it was always possible that they were seated against the near wall, in which case she would not be able to see them even if they were there. Throwing caution to the winds, she scrambled to her feet and sidled up to the door. Nobody paid her any attention as she craned her neck round the door-post and scanned that part of the hall which could not be seen from the terrace. Close to, the music was deafening and the atmosphere sweltering, but it was all lost on Barbara, who had attention only for her quarry.

  ‘If you’re looking for the Dorseys, you won’t find them in there,’ said a voice in her ear, making her jump almost out of her skin. She whirled round to find her friend of that morning, the pot-boy, standing at her shoulder, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Oh, hallo, Ginger,’ she said. ‘Have you seen them, then?’

  He darted a shrewd look at her. ‘What you got against them?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  ‘Come on, out with it,’ he said. ‘Nothing, indeed! Why, for all I know you’re one of them juvenile thieves I’m always hearing about, come to fleece the guests. What’s to stop me going up to them right now and telling them there’s a girl hanging around spying on them?’

  ‘Oh, please don’t!’ said Barbara, thinking quickly. ‘You’ll spoil everything. You’ve no idea how long it’s taken me to find them. I couldn’t bear it if you gave me away and I lost them again!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  She gazed at him with sad eyes.

  ‘It’s really none of your business,’ she said, ‘but if you must know, they—they are my real parents.’

  ‘What?’

  Barbara nodded.

  ‘Yes. I was brought up as an orphan, and only recently found out that my mother and father were still alive. I was stolen as a baby, you see, by a jealous aunt, who had no children and longed for a daughter of her own. She took me home, but treated me with terrible cruelty—almost like a servant. She beat me, and kept me in a cold attic, and starved me half to death.’

  She stopped, wondering whether she had gone too far, but Ginger was enthralled.

  ‘Coo!’ he said sympathetically.

  ‘It was only quite by chance that I discovered my parents were still alive,’ said Barbara, warming to her theme, ‘and that they were staying in this very place! I’ve been watching them for days now, but I can’t just go up to them and tell them I’m their long-lost daughter, now, can I? Why, they’d die of shock! I’m trying to think of the best way to approach them, and I’m keeping an eye on them as best I can, but I have to do it in secret, or my aunt will find out, and I daren’t think what she might do to me if she knows I am out tonight! Please don’t tell anybody.’

  She gazed at him pleadingly. He was touched by her plight.

  ‘’Course I won’t tell anybody,’ he said. ‘You carry on and watch them all you want. I’d be the same in your position. They’re in the lounge now—leastways, that’s where they were ten minutes ago when I did my rounds. Just don’t tell the head waiter I saw you, or he’ll have me out on my ear.’

  ‘Thanks, Ginger. I won’t forget this,’ said Barbara, clasping her hands together in gratitude. She flashed him a grin and ran off round the other side of the building, to where she remembered the hotel lounge to be. She was very nearly too late, for after watching the front entrance for a minute or so she happened to turn her head and saw the Dorseys walking rapidly away along the cliff path in the direction of Poldarrow Point, having evidently left the hotel through another door.

  Barbara bolted after them until she had almost caught them up, then slowed down to follow them at a discreet distance of twenty yards or so. The Dorseys walked briskly, neither looking about them nor, it seemed, talking to each other. Away from the bustle and noise of the hotel the night was still and quiet, with only the sound of the waves to be heard far below as Barbara followed along silently behind her quarry. The moon was bright now, and lit their way forward. It glinted off Harriet Dorsey’s golden hair, making it easy for Barbara to keep them both in sight with no need for a to
rch.

  The little procession carried on for several minutes until they passed Shearwater and Kittiwake Cottages and arrived at the place, a little farther on, at which Poldarrow Point came into full view from the cliff path. Here the Dorseys stopped so sharply that Barbara, whose attention had wandered, came within a few yards of them before she realized and hastily beat a silent retreat. She crouched down behind a gorse bush and watched. For about ten minutes they stood in the same spot, watching the old house intently without saying a word. They seemed to be waiting for something.

  ‘What on earth are they doing?’ Barbara muttered to herself.

  She had not given much thought to the question of how the Dorseys had been getting into the house each night—if indeed they had been getting in—but had vaguely supposed that there was a window with a loose catch somewhere, and that they had been entering that way. What was all this, then?

  Lionel Dorsey looked at his watch and shifted impatiently from one foot to another. He muttered something to his wife that Barbara could not hear, and Harriet appeared to nod in agreement. At that moment Barbara saw what they had been waiting for, when a light flashed three times in quick succession from one of the downstairs windows of Poldarrow Point. The Dorseys froze for a split second, watching, then set forth again unhesitatingly towards the house. Barbara waited for a second, then scrambled out of her hiding place and followed them. What could it mean? Who was signalling out of the window? Did they have an accomplice who had entered the house earlier and had been waiting for them to arrive? Was this mysterious figure the person who had attacked Clifford Maynard the other night?

  The gate had been left open, and the Dorseys went through it and up the path, treading softly so as not to be heard. Barbara stood by the gate-post and watched as they walked up to the front door. A dim light could now be seen approaching through the stained glass above it. Harriet gave a low knock, and immediately the door opened to reveal a figure holding a torch, who admitted them quickly and shut the door behind them. Just for a second the light from the torch fell on the face of the person carrying it, and Barbara gasped as she saw who it was. It was Clifford Maynard.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Barbara remained rooted to the spot for several minutes, indignant thoughts tumbling one after another through her mind. Mr. Maynard was in league with the Dorseys! He had been letting them into the house every night to allow them to search for the necklace. They must be planning to find it and steal Miss Trout’s rightful property from under her very nose! Barbara’s mouth fell open as she marvelled at the audacity of it, and she spent a good few minutes applying unrepeatable epithets to Clifford in her mind. Of all the low-down, contemptible tricks to play on a sweet old lady! What kind of despicable rotter would steal his own aunt’s birthright and turn her out of her family home and onto the streets?

  Barbara stood there in astonished rage, desperate to act. First, she contemplated marching into Tregarrion that instant and reporting Clifford to the police, but quickly realized that by the time she got there, made her report and returned, the Dorseys would most likely be gone. And what exactly could she say to the police? ‘I want you to arrest a man on suspicion of allowing a respectable couple to enter his own house to search for Marie Antoinette’s necklace’? Even Barbara had to admit that it sounded pretty ridiculous. They would just laugh at her and take her home—or worse, give her a ticking-off for wasting their time. But she couldn’t just do nothing. She had to stop them searching for the treasure before they had a chance to find it—but how? Several ideas came into her head and were immediately abandoned as being impractical or downright dangerous. For one mad second she even considered setting fire to the house, criminals and all—but of course, that would never do since firstly, Miss Trout was in there and might not get out in time, and secondly, she might, in destroying the house, destroy the necklace too.

  After a minute or two, however, Barbara calmed down and began to think more rationally. There was no need to panic. The necklace had defied both her own searches and those of the intruders up to now, and there was no reason to suppose that it would be found that night. Surely, therefore, the first thing to do was to try and see what the Dorseys were up to, and to make sure that they were in fact doing what she suspected them of doing. After all, she thought fairly, perhaps they were merely friends of Clifford’s who happened to have dropped in that night to pay him a social visit. She rejected that thought immediately, however. What, at almost midnight? And why all the hole-and-corner business with the flashing light signals, when the house was in darkness? Where was Miss Trout? Presumably in bed, or all the sneaking around would not be necessary. Had it been a simple friendly visit then they would have walked up to the front door quite openly and knocked. No: clearly they were up to no good, and Barbara was determined to prove it.

  Having reached this decision, she approached the house cautiously and prowled around the outside. The place seemed to be in darkness—but of course they would not have switched any lights on if they wanted to search without being seen. Where were they likely to be? Not the drawing-room or the dining-room, she thought, since she and Angela had searched those rooms themselves. And not the study or the kitchen either, for the same reasons. Down in the cellars, perhaps, or up on the top floor. Barbara remembered the white figure she had seen floating down the passage the other day, and shivered. There was safety in numbers, however, and perhaps the ghost was reluctant to manifest itself before a group of several people: she had always heard that they preferred to appear to one person at a time. The thought arrested her for a moment, and she looked around warily. Hadn’t Miss Trout mentioned something about the ghost of a drowned smuggler who haunted the garden? She had already seen one ghost, so perhaps that meant she was susceptible to that kind of thing. What did the clairvoyants call it? Sympathetic, or some such word.

  Apparently there were no departed souls wandering about the grounds that night. Barbara shook herself and proceeded on her way. She had made almost a full circuit of the house without seeing anything when she suddenly spotted a flash of light at the next window along. As far as she could judge, it was the study, and she was puzzled: why hadn’t Clifford told them that the study had already been searched? A large and ancient rose-bush stood guard by the window, preventing her from getting a good view through it, but she found a place where the branches were a little thinner and less thorny, and wriggled carefully past it and up to the window. She had only a partial view of the study from where she was standing, but it would have to do. The first thing she saw was the dim outline of Harriet Dorsey, carrying a torch and clearly absorbed in the task of rummaging through everything in the study. She was taking out the contents of a large cupboard one shelf at a time, then replacing them with meticulous care. Despite her indignation, Barbara approved of the woman’s methodical approach, which was presumably designed to avoid raising Miss Trout’s suspicions by making sure that everything stayed in the same place.

  She watched Harriet for a few minutes, then ducked in a panic as a light flashed past the window, barely an inch from her eyes. It must have lit up her whole face. Had they seen her? She held her breath for what seemed like ten minutes, but heard no exclamations or sounds of running feet. She exhaled slowly. Whoever it was had obviously not spotted her. It must have been Clifford or Mr. Dorsey, she supposed.

  After a few minutes she plucked up her courage and peeped cautiously through the window again. This time she saw Lionel Dorsey, engaged in pulling out all the contents of a writing-desk and examining its drawers closely. Barbara wondered at this activity—first, because while conducting their own searches the other day, they had all agreed that there was not much sense in looking in drawers or cupboards, given that the furniture had been in use for many decades and thus presumably anything hidden in it would have turned up by now. More importantly, however, Barbara recognized the writing-desk as a newish one that Miss Trout had mentioned as having belonged to her brother. Yes—she was sure of it: she remembered it
distinctly. The old lady had said something about the desk being one of the few things that had not been in the house for centuries. Why, then, was Clifford standing by and saying nothing as Lionel Dorsey searched through it? Perhaps he was unaware that it belonged to his aunt—but no, that wasn’t true either: he had been there when Miss Trout talked of it; had even made some remark about it.

  Barbara shrugged. She supposed that Clifford had forgotten about it, or that he had not noticed that Mr. Dorsey was wasting his efforts in looking for an eighteenth-century treasure in a modern writing-desk. She peeped through the window again and watched as Dorsey pulled out the drawers and shone his torch into the cavities, as though searching for signs of a secret hiding-place. His quest was evidently unsuccessful, for she saw him give a grimace and turn his attention to a bookshelf nearby. He began to remove the books one by one and examine them. Barbara grinned. She had done exactly the same thing herself only the other day.

  ‘You won’t find anything there,’ she murmured to herself. ‘There are no priceless treasures hidden inside dusty old Bibles on that shelf, I can tell you that!’

  Mr. Dorsey must have come to the same conclusion very quickly, for she saw him shove a book back onto the shelf crossly and then turn around and say something to his wife. She came to join him and picked a book up, then put it back and said something, gesturing at the shelf. Lionel Dorsey at once began trying to pull it away from the wall.

  ‘That’s going to make the most frightful racket,’ Barbara said to herself, and sure enough she heard a loud scraping sound as the heavy wooden bookshelf moved along the floor. Mr. Dorsey stopped tugging immediately and leapt back, looking almost comically aghast. Barbara watched in amusement the little silent pantomime as Harriet Dorsey upbraided her husband for his carelessness and he replied sullenly. There was now enough of a gap between the shelf and the wall to allow the searchers to see behind it, and Harriet began moving her torch up and down, presumably looking for a secret hiding-place in the small space.