Escapade (18 page)

“Yes,” said Cecily. “Everyone is in the drawing room.” Her aristocratic drawl had returned, but it lay over the strain in her voice like a first coat of paint, thin and transparent. “Mr. Beaumont asked me to show him around Maplewhite.” She was too young, maybe, to know that you never volunteer a lie. Or maybe too upset to remember.

Once again, Mrs. Allardyce didn’t seem to notice. “How
fortunate
for him,” she said, “to have you as a guide.” She patted Cecily’s forearm. “Well, dear, we’ll leave you to your tour. I’m sure we’ll see you later.
Au revoir
! And you too, Mr. Beaumont. Come along, Jane.”

“Mr. Beaumont?” Miss Turner had stepped closer to me.

I turned. Behind her, Mrs. Allardyce wobbled to a surprised halt.

Miss Turner’s uncanny blue eyes looked into mine and they were unwavering. She held herself straight, her back rigid. “I don’t recall much of what happened,” she said. She pressed her lips briefly together. “My fainting spell, this afternoon. But Mrs. Corneille told me that if you hadn’t been so quick to help, I should have injured myself. I wanted to thank you.

“No need to,” I said.

“There is,” she said, “and I do. And I apologize, once again, for causing you trouble.”

“No trouble. I’m glad you’re all right. Mrs. Corneille said your horse saw a snake?”

“Yes. It startled him. In any event, I thank you for your efforts.” She nodded once, as if pleased with herself for pulling something off, and then she nodded to Cecily. “Miss Fitzwilliam.”

“Come along, dear, come along,” said Mrs. Allardyce, and she swung her thick arm like a gaff into the crook of Miss Turner s elbow. She smiled again at Cecily, quickly, almost fiercely, and then she led Miss Turner off, toward the stairs.

As they disappeared around the corner, Cecily said, What a perfectly horrid little woman.”

I smiled. “Miss Turner?”

“No, silly. That awful Allardyce person. She’s a cousin of my mother’s. And what a positively sick-making idea that is.” Suddenly she turned to me. “She couldn’t have heard what I said, could she?”

“Mrs. Allardyce?”

“Miss Turner. What I said about ...” She raised her eyebrows, took a deep breath, let it out in a weary sigh, “
You
know ...” 

“About being a nymphomaniac?”

“
I am not
—" She heard herself squeal, glanced around, leaned toward me. “I am not a nymphomaniac,” she said between clenched teeth, and then she thumped me on the chest.

“I know,” I said. “And no, I don’t think she heard. And no, Mr. Houdini doesn’t think you’re a nymphomaniac either. No one thinks you’re a nymphomaniac. Except maybe you.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “What is
that
supposed to mean?” 

“Nothing. Look, Cecily. I’ve got to go. Don’t worry about Mr. Houdini. He won’t say anything.”

She canted her head thoughtfully to the side. “Do you think she’s prettier than I am?”

“Mrs. Allardyce?”

She made that almost-foot-stomping motion again. “No. Miss Turner.”

“She behaves better,” I said.

She tried to thump me again and I caught her wrist and held it. “See what I mean?” I said.

Her eyes were narrowed and she was staring at my hand. “Let me go, ” she said, her voice low and threatening. The rules of the game had been changed, and she didn’t like it.

“No more hitting,” I said.

She tossed her head back and she aimed her glance down along her cheekbones. “Or
what
?”

“Or we’ll talk to Daddy.”

“He won’t believe a word you say.”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

She glared at me for a moment, and then her shoulders slumped and she scowled. I let go of her wrist. Wincing furiously, her mouth twisted open, she rubbed at the wrist as though she had been shackled for a lifetime to an overhead beam.

“I don’t know why I care what you think,” she said darkly, glowering up at me. She raised her head. “I’m sure I don’t care. After all, you’re only a servant, really, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “That’s right.”

“And why on earth should I care what a servant thinks?”

“No reason at all.”

“Well, I don’t,” she said, and she wheeled about and stalked away. She whirled around the corner and I could hear her feet go stomping down the stairs.

I waited there in the hallway for a while, to give her time to find her drawl again.

ON THE WALLS, across the faded tapestries, plump naked people were still chasing each other in a refined way through the forest. Around the room, well-dressed people were gathered in clusters once again. No one seemed bothered by the idea that a sniper had shot at someone today. But maybe they were all rising above it. The English like to do that.

“Mr. Beaumont,” said Doyle, lumbering up from his seat at the coffee table to my right. “There you are. Please join us. Come and meet my friends.”

The table held platters of food, porcelain cups and saucers, a porcelain teapot, a silver coffeepot, a small silver cream pitcher, a small silver sugar bowl. There were six people sitting around all that. I knew four of them—Lady Purleigh, Cecily Fitzwilliam, Mrs. Allardyce, and Miss Turner. I didn’t know the woman in the wheelchair or the man sitting beside her.

“Mr. Phil Beaumont,” said Doyle, and held out his hand toward the woman, “this is my very good friend, the remarkable Madame Sosostris.”

Remarkable was right. The woman made Mrs. Allardyce look like a wood nymph. Probably she weighed as much as Doyle did, but she was half his height. Her body was draped in a gown of red and gold silk, like a medicine ball bundled in gift wrap. Her huge mane of white hair was swept back from her wide white forehead into a pompadour the size of an ornamental shrub. The hair fell in thick waves to her shoulders and cradled her white puffy face. Her bushy eyebrows and her long eyelashes were jet black, and so were the small sly eyes that glittered beneath them. And so was the starshaped beauty mark on her cheek, stuck there like a fly on a rice pudding.

She nodded to me the way a queen bee would nod to a drone. “So very charming to meet you,” she said. She spoke with an accent but I couldn’t tell what it was.

“And this,” said Doyle, “is Madame’s husband, a very kind and generous man. Mr. Dempsey.”

Mr. Dempsey was bony and angular and he probably weighed less, clothes and all, than one of his wife’s thighs. He was in his fifties, with sunken cheeks and sunken eyes and a thin bitter mouth. He wore a loose gray suit, a white shirt, a black bow tie, and a narrow black toupee that looked liked it had been oiled and then run over with a truck.

He unfolded himself out of the chair like a carpenter’s ruler and gave me a handful of knobby knuckles. “How do you do?” he said, and smiled painfully. His accent was American.

“Won’t you join us?” Lady Purleigh said, looking up at me from her chair. Beside her, Cecily Fitzwilliam raised her head and elaborately looked away.

“Thanks,” I said, “but I’ve got to talk to Mr. Houdini.”

Lady Purleigh smiled pleasantly. She looked good again today, slim and elegant in a long white silk dress that made her gray blond hair seem even lighter in color. “You’re entirely too conscientious, Mr. Beaumont. I admire your energy but this is the weekend, after all. I do hope you’ll set aside some time to enjoy it.”

I smiled back at her. “I will. Thanks.” I nodded to Madame Sosostris and to Mr. Dempsey, and then to Doyle.

He nodded and lumbered back to rejoin his table. I strolled across the room to the table where the Great Man was sitting alone. He was writing something in a notebook, probably another letter to his wife.

“All by yourself, Harry?”

“I refuse to sit with that woman. You saw her hair?”

“Kind of hard to miss it.”

“She could hide every manner of prop and gadget inside that monstrosity. Trumpets, bells, several pounds of ectoplasm.” Suddenly he grinned at me. “She’s a physical medium, you know. She produces apports.”

“Apports?”

“Physical manifestations,” he said. “From the spirit world. Although, strangely enough, upon examination they seem invariably quite mundane.” He rubbed his hands together. “Ah, Phil, I do look forward to this. Her control is a Red Indian, did you know that?”

“Her control?”

“Her Spirit Guide.” He grinned up at me and he rubbed his hands some more.

“Have you seen Lord Purleigh?” I asked him.

He shook his head impatiently. “Not since we spoke in the library.” “I talked to Sir Arthur about the London idea. The police. I

think that’ll work.”

“Excuse me.” A woman’s voice to my left, and a light touch upon my arm. The scent of ancient flowers.

“I apologize for interrupting,” said Mrs. Corneille, smiling first at me and then down at the Great Man. “I was returning to my table and I thought I might ask all of you to join us there.”

The Great Man glanced toward her table, which held Sir David and Dr. Auerbach. He still ranked them as vermin, probably, because when he turned back to Mrs. Corneille his smile was small and polite. “Thank you,” he said, and nodded. “Perhaps in a short while.”

She looked at me. “Mr. Beaumont?”

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.” I nodded goodbye to the Great Man and then I walked to the table beside Mrs. Corneille and her perfume. Dr. Auerbach shot to his feet, his tiny teeth and his pince-nez gleaming. He gave me a small crisp nod. Mr. Beaumont. A great pleasure to see you again.”

From his seat, Sir David nodded curtly and looked away.

Sir David, Lord Bob, Cecily. I was making a big impression on the uptown swells.

“Would you care for some food?” asked Mrs. Corneille as I sat down beside her. Opposite me, Dr. Auerbach neatly tugged up the knees of his trousers and he sat down and crossed his legs.

Like Doyle’s table, this one was piled with food. I realized that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “Yes,” I admitted. “Thanks.

Mrs. Corneille leaned forward for the teapot. “Tea?”

“Please”

She ignored him and poured the tea. She looked over at me. “Sugar? Lemon? Milk?”

“Nothing, thanks,” I told her.

She set the teacup before me. “The sandwiches are quite good,” she said.

I took a plate, took a sandwich from the silver platter. Bit into it. Smoked salmon and creamed cheese. Quite good.

Sir David said to Mrs. Corneille, “Dr. Auerbach was explaining that he has a literary as well as a psychological side.” He turned to Dr. Auerbach comfortably, almost proudly, like an inventor waiting for his favorite windup toy to start performing.

“Oh no,” Dr. Auerbach said to Mrs. Corneille. “Literary, no. I have myself produced a very few original monographs only. Studies of some interesting cases I have encountered. But I have, as I told Sir David, translated Herr Doktor Freud’s ‘Wit and Its Relationship to the Unconscious.’ This I did for your University of Leeds.”

Smiling, Sir David idly stroked his mustache with his index finger. “Leeds, was it?”

Dr. Auerbach showed his little teeth to Mrs. Corneille. “But this was quite some work, I can tell you. Because of the nature of humor, it was necessary that I substitute English jokes of my own for Herr Doctor Freud’s German jokes.”

“Perhaps,” said Sir David, “you would favor us with some of these?”

“Whatever is wrong with Lord Purleigh?” said Mrs. Corneille, looking off toward the entrance to the drawing room.

I turned. Lord Bob had arrived. Standing a few feet from Doyle’s table, he was waving his bushy eyebrows up and down and running his hands back through his hair, his face twisted. Doyle stood frowning before him, his big fingers on Lord Bob’s elbow as though supporting the man. Across the table, Lady Purleigh had risen from her seat. She looked worried.

“Excuse me,” I said. Reluctantly, I set my food back on the table and I stood up.

Doyle and Lord Bob were walking now toward the Great Man’s table. Both their faces were grim. I reached the table at the same time they did. The Great Man had seen them coming and he was already standing.

“Beaumont, good,” said Doyle. “We can use you, I expect.”

“What happened?” I asked him.

Doyle turned to Lord Bob, who scowled at me and then looked at the Great Man. “Some sort of accident,” he said. “The Earl. My father. His valet heard a noise in his room. Pistol shot, he thinks—but that’s impossible. Bloody impossible. Thing is, we can't get in and the Earl won’t answer. Bloody door is locked. Some problem with the key.”

The Great Man raised himself to his full height. “Houdini will open it, Lord Purleigh. This I promise you.”

IT WAS A broad massive wooden door studded with black wrought-iron nails and belted with black wrought-iron bands. The little man named Carson who was the Earl’s valet showed us with trembling hands that his big metal key wouldn’t fit into the keyhole. He was in his white-haired seventies and right now he didn’t look as if he would make it very much further. “It won’t fit, sir,” he kept saying, stabbing the key again and again into the hole, looking back frantically at the Great Man.

“Of course not,” said the Great Man. “The interior key is blocking the channel.”

We stood behind them—Lord Bob, Doyle, Higgens, the butler, and me. Most of us were panting. Lord Bob was gasping, leaning forward with his hands on his knees like a marathon runner at the end of the race and the end of his tether. His face was as red and shiny as a glazed beet.

We were at the northwest corner of the manor house, on the third floor, and it had taken us a while to dash over here. Along the way, puffing, Lord Bob had explained to the Great Man and Doyle that Carson had been in the anteroom—where we stood now—when he heard the shot. He had tried to open the door, discovered he couldn’t, and gone next door to his own room, to call Higgens on the emergency telephone. Higgens had found Lord Bob, Lord Bob had come up here, tried the door, and then come for the rest of us.

The anteroom was a kind of antique parlor with bare stone walls and heavy, roughly finished oak furniture scattered around, and another Oriental carpet on the floor. It was a strange room, looking like something out of the Middle Ages. But all of us were more interested in what was on the other side of the massive wooden door.