A Christmas Charade (18 page)

“In any case,” said Chamberlain, recalling him to the matter at hand, “you finished your last mission just prior to your father’s death, when Miss Gore-Langton would have been—”

“She was twenty-four. Said she was employed as a companion even then.”

“A lady’s companion. Not a bad cover for a government agent. She could’ve been blond or raven haired if you saw her then. Her name might’ve been Letitia Smith or Sarah Brown.” Chamberlain grinned. “All females in the government’s pay are masters of disguise.”

Clive did not like the way the conversation was going. Chamberlain was supposed to confirm his judgment, not raise arguments showing she
could
be an agent.

“She is too transparent to be one of us. I knew she was lying the moment she denied—”

Clive broke off, listening intently. He couldn’t be certain he had heard something, but he definitely had the feeling that he and Chamberlain were not alone.

“What is it, Stenton?”

Clive glanced at his partner. Chamberlain looked curious but not disturbed, which he would have been if he suspected someone was listening to their conversation. He was a man renowned for an acute sixth sense. He always knew when he was followed, even if his pursuer was as soft-footed as a cat. He knew when a pistol was trained on him, without having heard the betraying click of the hammer drawn back.

“It’s nothing.” Clive relaxed muscles which had tensed at the first feeling of unease. If Chamberlain did not sense anything amiss, then nothing was. “I’m a bit jumpy. That’s all.”

“I’ve never known you to suffer from a nervous disposition.”

“No, but when we last worked together, I hadn’t been retired for four years. You’ve quit government service less than six months ago, so you wouldn’t know what inactivity and boredom do to a man. But you will in a year or two.”

Chamberlain raised a skeptical brow. “If you say so. Tell me, is it because of the mysterious Miss Gore-Langton that you feel jumpy?”

“No. Mind you, I shan’t feel easy about her until I know what game she’s playing at, but she has nothing to do with my feeling on edge.”

“Then I can only assume it’s this ancestral pile of yours that’s getting on your nerves. Old houses, especially castles, do that to some people.”

Clive looked from Chamberlain’s face, which was perfectly grave, to the glass in the older man’s hand. “You can’t be foxed. You’ve hardly tasted the brandy. I must assume you’re touched in your upper works. Dammit, Chamberlain! What’s the castle got to do with anything?”

“You should hear the talk in the servants’ hall when your butler and housekeeper aren’t around to put a stop to it. There’s a ghost here at Stenton. Didn’t you know?”

Again, Clive was aware of something—it wasn’t unease exactly, but a sensation he couldn’t define. It was a feeling he’d had before. Here in the library, when he was talking with Nick. And in the corridor, when he imagined he was accompanied by a silent shadow.

He shrugged the feeling off. “Next you’ll be telling me that you believe in ghosts.”

“
I
don’t, but …” Chamberlain stretched in the chair and rested his gaze suggestively on Clive.

“Rot! Not I,” said Clive, more amused than annoyed. “Ghosts and spooks are for old women like Nurse Gertrud. She didn’t want Adam and Grace to stay in the former nursery wing in case it’s haunted. Insisted that they all be moved to the west wing instead.”

“I’ve met the nurse. Splendid woman. No nonsense about her.”

“She’s foolish enough to talk of ghosts. I only hope she has the sense not to do it in front of the children.”

“No need to worry about that. Nurse Gertrud don’t want the nipperkins alarmed. Threatened dire consequences if the nursery maids so much as breathe a word in their presence.”

Clive gave a snort. “They wouldn’t be in the least afraid, those imps. Quite the contrary. Day
and night
, just when we want them underfoot the least, they’d be all over the place trying to catch a glimpse of a ghost that doesn’t exist.”

Annie Tuck, having slipped into the library and seated herself in the chair behind the desk some time earlier, pursed her mouth. So she didn’t exist, did she?

“About Elizabeth,” said Clive, bending to put another log on the fire. “We cannot overlook the possibility that she’s in league with the smugglers.”

“Gudgeon,” muttered Annie.

Clive did not drop the piece of wood, but it was a near thing. He might agree that he was a gudgeon, even if he had raised the argument only as
a
devil’s advocate. But the dark mutter had come from the back of the room, from the direction of the desk, and not from Chamberlain in his chair by the hearth.

Just in case, however, he asked, “Did you say something, Chamberlain?”

“Not yet. Was about to tell you, though, that this is a devilish fine brandy.”

“And not smuggled either,” said Annie.

Clive’s hand tightened on the grip of the long iron poker. Dammit! There was that voice again. And Chamberlain just sat there, quite unconcerned. What the deuce was going on? With vicious thrusts, Clive stoked the glowing embers.

“About Miss Gore-Langton,” said Chamberlain, “I’m inclined to believe she is what she claims to be. A lady’s companion.”

“Well, now.” Annie nodded approvingly. “There’s a sensible lad.”

Clive’s hand jerked, but Chamberlain was unmoved by the praise. It seemed he was unaware of the voice Clive heard so clearly.

“Smugglers are a strange lot.” Chamberlain paused for a swallow of brandy. “They don’t like to involve womenfolk. Not even as a land contact. And it seems a bit farfetched to suspect the young lady as a go-between for Bonaparte’s agents.”

Listening grimly for another uninvited comment, Clive said, “I certainly don’t want to suspect her of treason.”

“No need to, I’d say. Hertfordshire is hardly the place where spies congregate, and didn’t you say she’s lived with the Astleys several years?”

“Five years.”

Or so Elizabeth said. At the time, he had seen no reason to disbelieve her. But he had remembered something that might shed a different light on the matter.

“The devil of it is, when the Astleys came to town two years ago for Juliette and Stewart’s wedding, Lady Astley did not have a companion. At least, she didn’t have Elizabeth with her. I would
not
have forgotten in just two years.”

“Humbug!” said Annie. “Forgetting is what gentlemen do best.”

Clive had had enough. Dropping the poker, he turned swiftly to face the desk.

Suddenly, the library seemed stifling hot. So hot that he had difficulty seeing clearly. How else could he explain the sight of a pen moving across a sheet of paper without a guiding hand to steady it?

“Chamberlain!”

Chamberlain raised a lazy brow.

“Look at the desk!”

Clive strode across the room, but before he reached the desk, before Chamberlain had shifted in the chair to observe him with a look of astonishment, the pen dropped onto the blotter in a splattering of ink.

Clive stopped abruptly, his eyes on a sheet of crested vellum. In an unformed hand someone had written,
Goasts Do Eggsist!

“Stenton?” Unhurried, Chamberlain crossed to his side. “Do you care to explain?”

Clive heard a gleeful chuckle, the whisper of skirts moving around the desk, passing so close to him that he could almost feel the material brushing against his leg. Then the sound seemed to be swallowed by the bookcase on his right.

Knowing he’d see nothing, no secret door or panel, he didn’t even turn his head but snatched up the sheet of paper and thrust it at Chamberlain.

“Explain?” he said hoarsely. “I? Not on your life! I’ll leave
you
to explain the voice that joined our conversation.
You
may explain the writing. After all, it was
you
who told me there’s a ghost at Stenton.”

“You heard a voice? Then you
do
believe in ghosts.”

“Devil a bit! I don’t. Out with it, Chamberlain! What fiendish tricks did you employ to make me see a pen writing on its own accord and to make me hear someone I cannot see?”

Chamberlain frowned. “It’s a strange thing about ghosts. I don’t believe in ’em. Never heard one and never saw one. Yet this is the second time I was in the same room with someone who did encounter a ghost while I was right there.”

Against his will, Clive was intrigued. “When was the first time?”

“In ’02, just before the Treaty of Amiens. I was in Venice with Bunting and Weatherby. You know them, I believe?”

Clive knew the men. They were two of the wiliest government agents. They still worked for the Secretary for War.

“We were staying at one of the palazzos. With friends, we believed. We were about to have dinner with our host. Suddenly Weatherby rose from the table and made our apologies. Said we were dead tired and could we take some food to our rooms.”

“Weatherby is
never
tired.”

“Exactly. But Bunting and I knew better than to contradict him. Our host was very obliging. Had a servant pile most of the food on a tray. Also several bottles of wine. Once we were in Weatherby’s room, with the door locked, Weatherby opened the window and tossed all the food to the dogs roaming in our host’s garden.”

“He suspected it was poisoned.”

Chamberlain shook his head. “He didn’t suspect. He
knew
. A lady whose portrait hung in the gallery and who’d been dead for close to a century told him the food was poisoned.”

“Are you saying Weatherby encountered a ghost?”

“Must have. He swore he saw her and heard her as clear as if she were a living person. Bunting, too, finally admitted he’d heard whispers about the food, but he didn’t see anyone. The dogs, by the way, were dead an hour later, and we made good our escape.”

“Dammit, Chamberlain, and you accused
me
of believing in ghosts. It’s you who believes.”

“I don’t,” Chamberlain said apologetically. “That’s why, I suspect, I never hear or see anything when others do.”

Clive gave a shaky laugh. “Have you looked at the paper I gave you?
I
didn’t write it.”

His face inscrutable, Chamberlain gazed at the writing for a long moment. Finally, a low, rumbling laugh shaking his lean frame, he handed it back to Clive.

“I’m willing to believe that you heard some ghostly voice, just as I was forced to believe Weatherby and Bunting heard a warning. But this writing … how old are your niece and nevvy, Stenton?”

“Nine, but—”

“You ought to check the credentials of their tutor and governess. The spelling is atrocious.”

Clive nodded absently. Adam’s spelling was exemplary, but Grace would never be accused of being a bluestocking. The explanation was comfortable—or would be if he could forget seeing the pen move by itself. And what about the voice he, but not Chamberlain, had heard?

He inserted a finger behind the band of his collar and tugged. The library
was
stifling. Enough to cloud a man’s brain. What with the heat and all that talk of ghosts and spooks, he must have imagined the whole.

Or Chamberlain—although Clive had never known him to be a jokester—had played a trick on him after all.

He looked at the pen, the ink stains on the blotter. Slowly, he stretched out a hand and touched the nib of the pen. A faint blue mark graced the tip of his index finger.
The deuce!

Chamberlain finished the last of his brandy. Setting the glass on the desk, he said, “I’d best be going. Even an impudent dog like me wouldn’t dare take up more than an hour of your time discussing the gardens.”

With an effort, Clive turned his attention to matters more mundane and also more important than the improbable existence of a ghost.

“Yes, go. Come dusk, Nicholas or I will be on the southeast tower watching for your signal.”

“So your indolent friend is still set on taking part in the operation?”

“He’ll definitely help keep watch. I won’t let him back off from that. As for the second phase …” Clive shrugged.

“A third man might come in handy,” said Chamberlain. “I don’t like it that we don’t know exactly where the cave is located.”

“I don’t like it either. But there’s nothing to be done about it—unless
you
would like to knock out a couple of toothless ancients?”

“No, thanks. Not if it’s old Will,” Chamberlain said dryly. “He’s been uncommonly kind to me. Always lets me buy him a drink. And there’s another one—I forget his name—but he has a granddaughter.”

This made Clive grin. “I cannot tell you which of the old gagers is presently on guard. There seems to be no end of them. I’ve sneaked down to the estuary three times since my meeting with Will, and every time I encountered a different set of ancients.”

Chamberlain started for the door. “They’re sent by Beamish, but even though the innkeeper may have been in charge of the smuggling operation at one time, he is not now. He’s as afraid as the rest of the men I’ve met in the village. And Jed Beamish, I’d say, is not a man easily frightened.”

“I’ve crossed the Channel many a time in a smuggling vessel,” Clive said pensively. “But not once did I encounter a frightened or timid free-trader. I very much suspect this lot went in way over their heads.”

“The men don’t talk about it, but the granddaughter I mentioned, she let slip that there’ve been two deaths recently. Two young men, come to grief on the cliffs they’d been climbing since the day they were breeched.”

Clive’s mouth tightened. “I don’t suppose the deaths can be blamed on a falling out among the smugglers, or on a rival gang?”

“In that case, the men would be furious but not afraid. No, Stenton. It’s my belief that Bonaparte’s agents have taken command here.”

His hand on the door knob, Chamberlain hesitated.

“What is it?” Clive’s eyes narrowed as he watched the lean, craggy face. He had never seen Chamberlain uncertain or hesitant. “Is there something else I ought to know?”

“That’s what I cannot decide.” The older man met Clive’s searching look. “A carriage broke down this morning a mile or two east of the village. The gentleman and his niece came to the Crown and Anchor, and they’ll be there until tomorrow because the wheelwright—a West Dean man—refuses to work on the Lord’s day.”