A Collector of Hearts (7 page)

She turned, ready to run and
fetch help and bumped into Blake.

“What’s happened?”

“Stephens has been hurt. I
was just about to go and get an ambulance. Someone knocked him out.”

“What were you doing down
here?” Blake stood with his arms folded, blocking her path.

“You don’t think I’ve hurt
him, do you?” Caroline did not want to have to explain about Lady Cassandra.
She doubted Blake would believe her.

“It’s very early in the
morning and you’re in the cellar alone with a man who’s been knocked on the
head. What should I think?”

“You’re here too! Where did
you spring from? Anyway, we’re wasting time here, suspecting each other. The
man needs a doctor and I’m beginning to wonder why you’re stopping me from
getting one.”

Blake pursed his lips, and
then stepped aside. “The number is on the pad in the hallway.”

Caroline had just passed
him, but turned back. “How do you know that? How do you know where everything
is in this house for that matter? You only arrived yesterday.”

“Stephens needs help. Go and
call the doctor.”

Caroline wrapped her thick
coat around her, and walked through the grounds of the abbey. The mist had
cleared to leave a dull, dank morning. She would have welcomed a little bit of
sunshine to light up her troubled soul. Stephens had thankfully survived the
attack and was in hospital, but his assault had left the houseguests feeling
nervous. Inside the abbey people spoke in quiet tones, and avoided eye contact.

           
“Caroline?”

           
She turned around and saw Anna Anderson walking towards
her. “Hello, Anna. Are you feeling as stir crazy as I am?”

           
“It’s dreadful, isn’t it? Poor Stephens.” Anna caught up
with Caroline and they walked aimlessly along the path to the abbey gates. “My
employer – she’s that dizzy actress with the blonde hair, Carla Burton?”

           
Caroline nodded. She had not seen much of Carla Burton,
but what she had seen was enough to recognise Anna’s description. “The one the
prince likes.”

“Well, there’s no accounting
for taste,” said Anna. “She’s talking about going home.”

           
“I’m not sure the police will allow that.”

           
“That’s what I tried to tell her, but she won’t listen.
She’s … well, she’s going out with someone royal – not Prince Henri, but one of
our royals, and is frightened the scandal will frighten him away.”

           
“It must be interesting, travelling around the film sets
with her.”

           
“I haven’t had that pleasure yet. I only joined her about
a month ago and, I believe the film roles are already drying up. I suspect
she’s slept with all the directors she can.”

           
Caroline laughed. “I’m surprised the masked ball is still
happening. It seems a bit callous, what with Stephens lying in a hospital bed.”

           
“The Hendersons wanted to cancel, but the prince has
insisted it go ahead, and one doesn’t argue with royalty.”

           
“No, I suppose not.”

           
“Of course we’re all excited about seeing the Cariastan
Heart too,” said Anna. “It must have been a real headache, keeping it safe
these last few days.”

           
“Oh, it isn’t here yet,” said Caroline. “It’s coming up
by secure courier from London later today. There’s no way Mrs Oakengate would
have travelled with it.” Caroline did not let on that Mrs Oakengate had planned
to do just that, and that it was Caroline who talked her into having it
delivered more securely.

           
“Silly me, why didn’t I think of that?”

           
“I’d better go back,” said Caroline. They had reached the
gates to the abbey, but despite Caroline’s longing to run away and go back to
the safety of her Aunt Millie and Uncle Jim, she turned around. “Mrs Oakengate
will want me to help her dress for lunch.”

           
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” said Anna, walking alongside
her. “This idea of dressing for different meals. It must be nice to have enough
money to do it.”

           
“Yes. Meanwhile I have to make do with a couple of tweed
suits and one black satin dress.”

           
“Didn’t I hear that your mother’s novels earned you a lot
of money? Oh, sorry, forgive me, that was incredibly intrusive and rude.”

           
“Not at all. Yes, they do still sell, though not as well
as they did when she died. I think people bought them then to try to find clues
to all her wrongdoing, and her relationship with my father. I’m not poor. But
I’m not rich either, hence me having to work for Mrs Oakengate. It isn’t so
much that I need the wages, but I couldn’t afford the travel.”

           
“Your aunt and uncle are the Haxbys, aren’t they? I
thought they were rich.”

           
“Yes, they are, but I prefer to stand on my own two
feet.”

           
“I know what you mean. If I’m honest, Caroline, I hate
this job. Pandering to the whims of a spoilt actress – especially one who can’t
act her way out of a paper bag. One day I’d love to have enough money to just
please myself, maybe even take up my own acting career again.”

           
“You act?”

           
“Not so anyone would notice. I played Juliet in a school
play, and had a bit part in one of Jack Henderson’s films.”

           
“Really? Which one?”

           
“The one he’s just finished filming. I play Woman On
Street Who Sees Hero And Heroine Have First Kiss. I say ‘Well, really, and in
Brighton too’. It’s a bravura performance.”

           
“I’m sure it is!” Caroline stopped for a moment and
looked up towards the top floor of the abbey. “Just a minute. There’s someone
up there.” A shadow passed across the window of Caroline’s room, then appeared
again briefly at the window in Mrs Oakengate’s bedroom.
 

           
“Mrs Oakengate perhaps?” said Anna.

           
“No, the door is locked and only I have the key. If she
wants anything she sends me.”

           
“One of the servants then. I assume they have the key.”

           
“It’s rather late for them to be in there.” Caroline
looked at her watch. “They’re usually finished by ten o’clock. It’s
eleven-thirty now. There’s something odd going on here. The last couple of
nights, I think someone’s come into my room, and then last night I found that
someone had been searching through our luggage. Perhaps like you, they think
the Cariastan Heart is already here. Sorry to cut and run, Anna. I’d better get
up there.”

Chapter Six

When Caroline reached her
room, it was empty. She went to the window and looked down to see Anna waving
up at her. She waved back, and started a search of both rooms. Things had been
upset again, and this time not everything had been put back where it should be,
suggesting the prowler had seen her coming and made a quick getaway. She
thought of calling the police, but nothing had been taken, and it was hard to
say for certain that things had been disturbed. The police, on seeing her
suitcase on the bed would just assume she had left it there and forgotten. She
did not want to make a fool of herself. Whoever had been there must have seen
Caroline rushing back to the house and fled. But where to? The door had still
been locked when she reached it.
 

           
She checked around the walls of both rooms. All the walls
in Mrs Oakengate’s room, apart from the wall that adjoined Caroline’s room,
were stone built. But three of the walls in the vestibule were wooden panelled,
with only the outer wall near the window made of stone. Caroline started
tapping on each panel, finally finding what she was looking for at the end of
her bed. When she rapped on the panel, it sounded hollow. She ran her fingers
around the edges, until she found a small notch of wood that protruded almost
imperceptibly. When she pressed it, the door clicked open.

           
It led to a secret passage. With no torch or candle to
light the way, Caroline was somewhat reluctant to walk the passageway alone,
but she garnered her courage, and took the first steps in. She faltered a
little when what little daylight came from her bedroom ran out and she was left
in total darkness. The passage twisted and turned, she supposed running a
circuit around the walls of the rooms. She wondered if there were doors leading
to the other rooms, but first she wanted to know exactly where the passage
began. Given the width of it, Caroline wondered if it were really a secret
passage or just an old out of use corridor once used by the servants to go
about their business discreetly and without being seen in the main part of the
house. She felt up the walls, and sure enough found some old gas lamps. She
wished she had some matches with which to light a few, assuming they were still
serviceable.

She almost fell headlong
down a tight staircase, only just correcting her balance in time. She placed
her right hand on the wall to steady herself, only to find that the wall gave
way, opening into one of the bedrooms. Caroline stepped in, wondering whose
room she should find, only to see that it was empty of all furniture, apart
from about twenty freestanding mirrors set haphazardly around the room.
 
As a child, whilst other children had loved
the House of Mirrors at the funfair, Caroline had always hated them. The
disjointed reflections were at odds with her sensible black and white view of
the world. Walking into that bedroom was exactly like being in a House of
Mirrors.

Her own reflection came back
at her from one of them, only it was distorted, making her appear at least a
foot shorter than she really was, and a good two feet wider. She moved among
the mirrors, finding that they each changed her in a different way. Longer,
shorter, wider, thinner. One gave her a strange hourglass shape, as well as
swelling her head to twice its normal side. The reflections disorientated her,
even though her common sense told her they were obviously mirrors taken from an
old fun fair and, she supposed, part of the coming entertainment.
 
Just as she reached the last mirror, nearest
to the bedroom door, saw the distorted outline of Lady Cassandra looking back
at her.

“Lady Cassandra,” she said,
spinning around. The image also spun away, reflected on all the other mirrors,
before disappearing completely. She searched the room, seeing brief glimpses of
a very disjointed Lady Cassandra, before they appeared to be snatched away from
her. She eventually came back to the bedroom door, which came out a few doors
away from the galleried landing. Looking up and down the corridor, she could
see no one.

Rather than go that way,
Caroline hastily made her way back to the secret passageway and the back of the
room, finding herself once again at the top of a staircase. She pressed her
heels against the back of each step, before moving down onto the next, until
she reached the bottom and breathed a sigh of relief. The passage smelled
mouldier nearer to the bottom and she hated to think what she might have
stepped in. At one point, she felt something brush past her leg, and had to
stifle a scream. “Rats,” she muttered. “I hate rats.” The passage extended for
several yards again before there was another staircase. She descended that one
as carefully as the first.

 
A couple of yards on from those steps, in the
lower passageway, she hit a solid object in front of her, before realising it
was not so solid. It was flesh and blood, and smelled of expensive cologne.

“Hello, Caroline. It is
Caroline isn’t it? I recognise your scent.”

“Blake? What are you doing
here?”

“Trying to work out what
happened to Stephens. I figured that if you hadn’t knocked him out, someone
else must have, but I couldn’t work out where they might have gone. Then the
idea hit me. I’d heard there was a secret passageway here, but had never found
it. I’ve just found out that it starts in the cellar.”

“It leads to my room,” said
Caroline. “And at least one other, that’s full of strange mirrors.”

“So no Lady Cassandra’s
ghost then?”

“Probably not.” In truth
Caroline had her own ideas about that, having seen the Lady’s reflection and
had a couple of nocturnal visits, but she kept them to herself.

“Pity, I always liked that
story. I didn’t know about the secret passageway though. But I think old
Stephens knew and that’s why he was knocked out.
 
Because he guessed what was happening and
came down here to check the gas, as we did. Except he walked in on our
villain.”

Caroline wondered why she
had not realised it before. “It’s your house,” she said. “That’s how you knew
where everything was and why Jack Henderson couldn’t really refuse to let you
stay.” She sighed heavily. “Last night there was something niggling me, and I
know now it was that. Only he said it so casually I missed it. Stephens called
you Master Blake instead of Mr Laurenson.”

“Yes, the old man slipped up
a bit there, but he has known me all my life and some habits are hard to break.
And it’s my grandfather’s house actually, though I suppose it will be mine one
day.”

“But why the subterfuge? Why
not just say you lived here?”

“I wanted to know what was
going on and I was afraid the presence of one of the owners might put certain
people on alert.”