Morning newspaper,
Coffee’s steam curls in the sun,
Pink of wounded flesh.
We ate a pair of hastily composed sandwiches as birdsong started up in the garden. On my way up the stairs, I looked in on Haruki, finding her turning restlessly on the settee, hair damp with sweat. I pulled a rug over her tiny form, then followed Holmes up to a bed inadequately shaded by the curtains. My consciousness shut down four heartbeats after my head hit the pillow—and I slept undreaming for a solid ninety-seven minutes.
The telephone jangled like a screech of Doom. I stumbled down the stairs and snatched it from the stand, making a gargling sound that the person on the other end interpreted as a greeting.
“Morning, Miss Russell. Billy here. I have the information Mr Holmes asked me for. About Bart Collins?”
I repeated the sound, which this time he took to be encouragement.
“Collins was shot three times with an automatic pistol, and Scotland Yard recovered two of the casings. So if you come across an automatic pistol somewhere, keep that in mind.”
“Good,” I croaked.
“I also have the precise location where he was shot. You want that?”
“Just. Wait. Yes.” I stuck the corner of the pad under the telephone stand to weight it, and scribbled down the information. It meant nothing to me. No doubt Holmes would be able to picture it in an instant.
I squinted at the page to make sure the marks were actually legible, then straightened. “Thank you, Billy, I’m not sure what—”
He interrupted me. “Another thing. I went past the Darley house this morning, just to be sure? And looking in, all the furniture was covered over. So they are actually gone, for a bit, anyway.”
“That’s very helpful, Billy. Thank you again.”
We both rang off. I yawned, and turned to face my audience of two. Holmes held out my spectacles; I traded him the scrap of paper. “That’s where Collins was found. Did you put the coffee on?”
Wordlessly, he moved towards the kitchen. I studied the remaining person, who looked surprisingly fresh and fit.
“Good morning,” I said. “You look—”
“Did you get it?” she demanded.
“Get what?”
“You went to London for information. Wasn’t that what the ’phone call was about?”
“May I have some coffee before the interrogation starts?” I begged.
Coffee, food, and sunshine. It was going to be a glorious spring day in Oxford, although I wasn’t sure I was in any shape to appreciate it.
But the brain cells began to pull themselves together, and we moved to provide Haruki with the promised information.
It does help, sometimes, to review a case aloud. As we talked, she sipped her tea and nibbled at a half piece of toast. A year ago, she’d looked fourteen years old: that morning, she looked older than I—although perhaps not older than I felt.
When we had finished, Holmes went upstairs to shave while I examined the patient’s arm. The torn stitches were healing, the skin was pinkly swollen, but there was no sign of dangerous poisoning.
She was lucky not to have lost the use of her arm—if not the arm itself.
I covered it with a waterproof wrapping so she could have a bath, and later restored the bandages.
Between one thing and another, it was nearly ten o’clock when she faced me with the question. “What do you plan next?”
“Holmes and I need to locate the Darley house.”
“Not the one in London?”
“Seems that they’re both off with friends. However, the Darley country house is not far from here, and we thought we’d go and take a look. Merely a reconnaissance,” I hastened to add. My local maps had showed a hamlet by name of Darley Holt, in the general neighbourhood of the places the butcher had given us—but in England, mere name was no guarantee of a family connexion. In any event, we could hardly drive up to the door and stare openly.
“You are not going to break in?”
“During broad daylight? No.”
“You’re going now?”
“Yes.”
“I will come with you.”
I had expected that. “Your arm may be better, but you’re in no shape to wander about the countryside with us. In any event, where we’re going, you’d stick out like a bandaged thumb.”
“Only during the daytime.”
“Well, more so during the day,” I conceded.
She thought over what I had said. “If you give me your word that you will come back after your reconnaissance, I will stay. But if you go out again tonight, I shall come with you.”
“Let’s see how it—”
“I will come. A team of three is better than two, for the purpose of invading a home. And if you avoid me, I will not be here when you return. I think you would rather I be with you than pursuing matters on my own, in directions you can neither control nor anticipate.”
True. The consequences could be disastrous. It was also true that having a third person keeping watch permitted the other two to devote their fuller attentions to a search. And if the house was like most of its kind, there would be a vast enough square footage to keep all three of us occupied.
I nodded in agreement. “If you stay quiet today, and if we decide to go in search of the book later, we will take you with us.”
However, I made a mental note to check the boot of the motorcar before I drove off this morning, just in case.
There are any number of disguises available to a person wishing to make enquiries in the countryside. A laden wagon and bad shoes are necessary for itinerant smiths or sellers, but short of that, it is a matter of small, key flourishes. A pair of strong binoculars transforms any set of tweeds into the garments of a devout birdwatcher. A ridiculous hat, a well-used Ordnance map, and a voracious appetite mark one as a committed rambler.
However, we did not think the Darleys the kind of people known to move among the eccentrics, which left out ramblers and birdwatchers.
“I’m afraid it’s horses, Holmes.”
I had a riding outfit folded away in a cedar chest, and Holmes had portions of the necessary clothing, but in the end, he had to make a quick trip down the Turl for proper riding trousers. As he was waiting, Miss Pidgeon and I cast around for the other essential part of our outfit: horseflesh.
When Holmes rang to say that his trousers had been provided and donned, I checked the car boot, then circled through Oxford, pulling to the side along the High so Holmes could jump in, before continuing across Magdalene Bridge and out through Headington. I wound along country lanes and villages to the stables kept by one of the late don’s former students, where we found a lot of fat horses in the care of three thin sisters.
We chose our mounts first by their lack of distinctive appearance, and second by the recommendations of the sisters. We let them saddle the beasts, but earned their approval by double-checking the girths ourselves before mounting up. We headed north, Holmes’ saddlebags bulging unbecomingly with Ordnance Survey maps.
It had been too long since I had been on a horse. My hip sockets always forgot how very wide horses’ backs were, and my legs how much work it was to perch in the stirrups for hours on end. We had the sense to stop well before Darley Holt to fall from the saddles and stagger around for a while, returning the circulation to our limbs. The horses looked askance at this behaviour, but it did mean that when we remounted and rode the last ten minutes, we were able to drop from our saddles with the proper degree of insouciance.
We did not need to stay for luncheon at the public house, once we had the information we needed—that new friend of ours, Lady Darley: she had a house around here, didn’t she? And where might that be, precisely?—but the smells from the kitchen would have been tempting even without the exercise, and the beef pie was almost worth the effort of getting to it.
We rode on, our aches nicely anaesthetised by drink. Between the maps and the local informants, we found the manor house withou
t much problem.
It seemed small for an earl’s estate, although as we came nearer, the truth of the matter emerged: what looked like a simple Georgian block from the front actually had a pair of wings extending out the back, one side substantial, the other less so. It was two storeys high, with possibly a third tucked under the roof slates. The front door was graced by a grand portico with tiny upper-floor balconies on either side. Both balconies had French doors; between them, a wide arched window topped the portico like a tea cosy. Fortunately, the Victorian improvements had ended with those unsuccessful architectural fillips, so the house merely came across as slightly abashed, rather than actively shamefaced.
Vines crept up iron trellises on either side of the portico; a lawn suitable for garden parties stretched out alongside; in the distance, a few acres of woodland rose up, marked on the map as Darley Grove. A trio of ancient beeches partially blocked the stables, but as we rode on, the low buildings came into view. They appeared to be stables and kennels, with nearly as much square footage as the house’s ground floor. Walls and out-buildings hinted at a sizeable kitchen garden behind the house, but fields rolled out on all sides: the estate of a fox-hunting man.
Although perhaps not at the moment. Holmes climbed down and bent over his horse’s front hoof as if in search of a stone, while we listened intently, but in vain, for evidence of hounds. We continued up the lane that wrapped around the house and its paddocks. This time, he dismounted and handed me the reins, to walk along the road behind me and stand as if relieving himself. In fact, we both listened and, this time, breathed in the air moving down from the house.
Birds sang; lambs bleated; the odours of spring lay all around. But we could catch neither the smell nor the sound of dogs.
“They do still have horses,” I noted.
“The viscount and Lady Darley did go for a ride in Hong Kong,” Holmes recalled.
Idly, I reflected on the change of titles: Viscount Darley was now the Earl of Darley, but what about his stepmother? The countess—Darley’s wife—old Darley, that is—wasn’t she now the “dowager”? Perhaps that depended on whether or not Tommy had married. I imagined that Charlotte, Lady Darley, would wince at the word “dowager.”
A figure came out of the stables block with a bucket. He crossed the gravel yard to the back door, which he pushed open but did not enter. A few seconds later, a woman came to take the bucket, standing for a time in conversation. She then closed the door. The man returned to the stables.
“What do you think?” I asked Holmes.
He shook his head. “It looks too quiet for them to be in residence. But if even one of them was home, or if they drove up while you were in the yard, you’d be trapped.”
“I’d just have to take off cross-country. That, after all, is what this animal is for.”
He cast a dubious eye at the fields. “Rather tall hedges.”
They did look a lot higher than the low shrubbery I had urged the mare over on the ride up, and there were three, four—five of them between yard and road. “I’ll just have to hang on,” I replied, and whipped out the final piece of my disguise: a tube of scarlet lipstick.
Holmes corrected a slip with his pocket-handkerchief (horseback not being an ideal place for the application of makeup). I buttoned my spectacles into a pocket, then reined my mare around in the direction we had come in, kicking the beast into a trot. Holmes continued leading his horse along the road, since it was better to claim incipient lameness than to park one’s horse in the middle of a lane for all the world to wonder at.
I jogged along, slowing to a walk as we turned into the drive. Weeds sprouted through half a mile of gravel. Fields turned to lawn near the house, and my mount’s ears went forward, confirming that there were others of her kind in the stables ahead of us. Opposite the front door, the stables came more clearly into view, one wing of it given over to a more modern form of transport: motorcars. One of the three spaces was empty. I hoped devoutly that both residents were inside it, until evening at least.
The house was quiet, without the endless strains of Tommy’s gramophone, but a glance in the sitting-room windows showed furniture, not dust-covers. The Darleys were either in residence, or not away for long. The mare tossed her head, and I made my grip on the reins go loose.
“Not yet,” I murmured at her ears. “If I want you to make a break for it, you’ll know.”
No head leant from a window; no surprised voice called a greeting to an old shipboard acquaintance. I made it to the yard between house and stables, where I paused, wondering whether housemaid or groom would be a more likely conversationalist.
My choice was made for me when the man I had seen earlier came out of a stall, pulling off his soft cap to reveal a tonsure of greying hair.
“ ’Elp you, miss?”
I donned a full-blown upper-class drawl and tried not to squint myopically at him from beneath the brim of my helmet. “Yaiss, I was out for a ride when I saw this place and it occurred to me that I’d seen a photo of it, in a friend’s rooms—in college, you know? This is the Darley place, isn’t it?”
“That it be, miss.”
“Oh, jolly good! I shall enquire at the house.”
“Sorry, miss, but the Darleys baint ’ere. They be gone, visitin’ friends. Leicester, I b’lieve t’was.” I drank in the creamy Oxfordshire accent, so rich in rhotics and lacking in initial H’s and final G’s. My smile seemed to make him nervous; his hat began to revolve in his hands.
I came to myself and raised my chin again, that I might look down my nose at the rustic. My smile merely polite now, I asked him more about the Darleys, leading the man in a casual conversation about their friends, their horseflesh, their habits, the household staff. When I had as much information as I thought I could extract without rousing his suspicions, I made one last query concerning their expected return, and put on a look of disappointment at the news that they were not expected until the week-end.
“That’s too, too bad. Oh well, another time. Thanks so, and cheeri-o!” I yanked the horse around and urged her forward before he could venture any questions in turn.
But I was not quite quick enough. “Miss? Miss, who shall I tell ’em was by?”
“Susan,” I called over my shoulder, and drove my heels into the mare’s ribs. She was startled into a canter, nearly dumping me to the gravel, but we cleared the drive without Tommy’s sports car (Surely he would drive a sports car?) flying at me down the lane. I posted briskly along until I had caught Holmes up, then let the mare slow to an amble.
“Why has this country never adopted Western saddles?” I complained.
“Because English women prefer their backsides muscular?”
I laughed aloud. “There is that. The Darleys appear to be staying here,” I told him, “but they’re away until the week-end. As the butler told Billy, in Leicestershire.”
“I was relieved when you did not come flying across the fields.”
“Not as relieved as I. I also think the poor fellow was well distracted by the lipstick. When he tells Tommy—sorry, I just can’t think of him as ‘Lord Darley’—when he tells them there was a visitor, all he’ll be able to say is that there was a young woman named Susan who had bright lipstick.”
He handed up the handkerchief that he had applied to my mouth earlier. When I returned it, the linen looked as if it had been used to mop a severed artery. He folded it cautiously into a pocket, then worked his left boot into its stirrup.
“He did not recognise the horse?” he asked, gathering the reins.
“He looked, but his gaze did not sharpen.”
“Good.”
“Something else.” I frowned, trying to pull together vague impressions. “I think—his country accent was a bit distracting, but I think he doesn’t like the Darleys much.”
“Doesn’t respect them, you mean?”
“That’s it. A certain … laconic flatness to some of his remarks. And although the place appears to be fully staffed,
there were weeds growing in the drive and the windows wanted a scrub.”
“Interesting.” He shook his horse into a walk.
Servants don’t need to like their employers—in some ways, it’s easier if they don’t—but a lack of respect undermines the entire machinery. For a gardener to let the weeds grow and the housekeeper to lose her pride—and for a grey-haired stableman to allow his disdain to leak out before a self-proclaimed friend of the family—their feelings had to be pretty close to contempt.
Interesting, indeed.
We disembarked from the saddles that afternoon with all the enthusiasm of geriatrics. I leant on the mare, trying to straighten my spine (I wish I could say that I was more successful at this than Holmes, twice my age) while making casual and appreciative conversation with the sisters. Helping to groom the beasts restored a degree of flexibility, but still, we walked away with the uncertain gait of a newly-landed Atlantic passenger. Both of us stifled groans as we folded into my motor.
“Oh, for a Japanese bath!” I said.
“Capital idea,” he said.
Unfortunately, my own bath-tub was not big enough for two. More through self-interest than a concern for my husband’s spine, I made a suggestion. “Holmes, what about if I drop you at the Turkish baths on Merton Street? A long steam and a good pummel will set you up nicely for an evening of burglary.”
“An idyllic proposal, Russell. However, I fear you shall be returning to Oxford without me.”
“Why? What do you have in mind?”
“That public house on the main road, six miles from Darley Holt. If the staff of a household are displeased, they talk over their beers.”
I sighed, resigning myself to the aches in my limbs and the smell of horse in my skin. “I’ll come, too, Holmes.”
“No. We can’t have Miss Sato casting about the streets of Oxford. In any event, your presence would stifle the topics I intend to pursue.”
In the end, I did not argue too hard.
What comes in between
Dreaming Spies Page 27
