Escapade (33 page)

Doyle had moved to the north side of the ring, close to Lord Bob and Lady Purleigh. I glanced around the crowd. Mrs. Corneille was watching me. So was Miss Turner. So was Cecily.

Cecily looked away.

Lady Purleigh raised the cowbell and struck it with the hammer.

I stepped out into the ring.

Sir David held himself upright, his handsome head and his broad shoulders thrown back, his arms up, the left arm forward, the left fist making small, tight, controlled circles. His right fist was cocked back under his chin. He advanced on his left foot, his right foot perpendicular to it, his weight balanced. He moved flatfooted but he still moved well. He had done this before.

I went to him in a crouch, shoulders down. We circled each other slowly. I smiled at him. Keeping my voice low, I said, “She must’ve hurt your feelings, hey, Davey?”

He jabbed his left at me and I slipped it. He followed me and jabbed again, off balance. I weaved right, faked a left at his jaw, hooked a right to his heart. He was backing off but I connected. He swung a right at my head. I caught it on my left forearm, and he pitched a left and I caught that on my right forearm and I jabbed two quick lefts at his nose. He brought up his arms and I got him with a combination, left, right, left, in the stomach. His nose was bleeding. He opened his mouth and dropped his arms and I went over them and I hooked another left at the nose. His head jerked back and his chin stuck out and I brought up my right with everything I had, brought it up at an angle from my hip, going for the ridge at the back of his jaw. I hit it and I felt a knuckle pop in my hand.

Staring up at the sky, Sir David took a step back and then his legs buckled beneath him and he dropped. He landed heavily on his back, his arms flopping out along the grass. His head rolled to the side.

I stood over him beneath that blue sky in the center of a huge silence. Nothing moved.

Suddenly Doyle was there and I eased back. He glanced at me, his expression unreadable, and then he turned to Sir David and bent slightly forward and started counting aloud, swinging his arm down through the air to mark time. “
One
,” he said. “
Two
.”

I snapped my knuckle back into place. If you wait too long, the swelling starts and then you’re stuck.

“
Five
.
Six
.” Doyle was calling out the numbers louder now, maybe hoping that if he shouted, Sir David would hear them. And maybe Sir David did. His leg moved slightly. But he didn’t get up.

No one in the crowd had said anything. Not even the Great Man. I looked out there. Mrs. Corneille glanced away. Miss Turner was staring at me with the corners of her mouth turned down.

“
Nine
,” said Doyle. “And ten.” Sir David hadn’t moved again. “And the winner is Mr. Beaumont.” Grimly, Doyle wrapped his big hand around my wrist and raised my arm over my head. I had the feeling that if he wanted to, he could’ve plucked me from the ground like a dandelion.

Suddenly the Great Man was at my side, jumping from foot to foot, slamming gleefully at my shoulder. “
Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip, hooray!
”

The others were less enthusiastic. They applauded, but briefly and lightly. Some of their hands, probably, never made contact with each other. Even Lord Bob, who had just won five pounds, looked like a man who would rather be somewhere else. Cecily turned to her mother and said very clearly, “But is it over?” Her mother leaned toward her.

Doyle dropped my hand and slowly went down onto his knees beside Sir David. I could hear him exhaling with the effort.

Cecily backed away from her whispering mother and complained, “But there were supposed to be ten of those things. And he said they were supposed to last three minutes.”

On the ground, Sir David moved his leg again. Doyle looked up at me. “He’s coming around. I believe he'll be all right.”

I nodded. “Good.”

“Excuse me,” said an unfamiliar voice behind me.

I turned. So did Doyle and the Great Man.

There were three people standing on the flagstone patio. One of them was Briggs, and he was wearing his black uniform. Beside him stood two men wearing suits. One of the men was bulky in the shoulders and taller than I was. The other was shorter, and he was the one who smiled pleasantly. “Good morning to you all, he said. “And it
is
a lovely morning, isn’t it?
Jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops
.” He smiled again. “Allow me to introduce myself and my associate. I’m Inspector Marsh. This is Sergeant Meadows. We’re from London. The C.I.D.”

"WELL NOW, MR. Beaumont,” said Inspector Marsh. “You’ve been at Maplewhite for a while now. A houseguest since Friday evening, I take it. And you’re a Pinkerton, a trained investigator, hmmm?” He smiled. “Really a stroke of luck for us, our having you here.”

I wondered if he were pulling my leg. It was something I wondered the entire time I talked to him.

He turned to Sergeant Meadows. “ ’
Tis a lucky day, boy, and we’ll do good deeds on’t.
” Sergeant Meadows nodded, without taking his eyes off me. Marsh turned back to me. “The Winter’s Tale. You know Shakespeare, do you, Mr. Beaumont?”

“Not personally.”

He chuckled. “Lovely. We’ll get along famously, you and I.” He smiled. “So you’ve been rattling about the manor house for two days now, in the very midst of all these mysterious goings-on. And no doubt you’ve kept your eyes open? Asked a question or two, have you? Confess now.” He smiled slyly, narrowing his eyes, and he waved a slender finger at me. “I see a strange confession in thine eye, do I not?”

I smiled. “Yeah. A question or two.”

“Well of course you have. Leopards and spots, eh? I couldn’t expect anything else.” He sat back comfortably, adjusted his pants legs to spare the crease, and he crossed his legs, right over left. “Well then, if you don’t mind, why not put the good sergeant and me into the picture.”

The three of us were in the library. Marsh and Sergeant Meadows sat on the sofa, across from my chair. The sergeant sat on Marsh’s left, a small notebook in his ample lap. In his late thirties, wearing a black suit, he was a big man, nearly as tall and as broad as Doyle. From a sharp widow’s peak, his black hair ran slick as a coat of lacquer back along his wide rectangular skull. His heavy jaw was sheened with blue—he had the kind of beard that probably grew back while he was rinsing the soap from his razor. There was a small scar, shaped like a comma, running vertically through the center of his thick left eyebrow, and his nose had been broken at least once and then badly reset. Police sergeants in England, it looked like, didn’t have any easier a life than police sergeants in the U.S.

Inspector Marsh was in his forties. His nose had never been broken. It was a narrow, aristocratic nose in a narrow, aristocratic, mobile face. The nose was delicate, like almost everything else about him—his fine brown hair, his eyebrows, his cheekbones, his pointed chin, his small chiseled mouth. The gray wool suit he wore, delicately pin-striped, had been delicately tailored to his slim athletic body. The point of a powder-blue handkerchief peeked delicately from the breast pocket of the coat. He looked so delicate that I was afraid he might float off the ground and sail away.

But delicate cops don’t last very long. And Marsh’s eyes—hazel, almost green—weren’t delicate at all. His face seemed open and without guile. He smiled as he bantered at me, and he pursed his lips together, or nibbled the lower lip between small white teeth. Every so often he wiggled his eyebrows, or dipped them, or raised them in surprise or amusement. But whenever he looked at me his eyes were always the same—cool and shrewd and watchful.

It had been his idea to talk to me alone. Out on the patio, Lord Bob had introduced himself to the Inspector, and then introduced everyone else. Lady Purleigh, Cecily, Sir Arthur, the Great Man. And Sir David, who was up off the ground now but still a little blurry. Lord Bob had introduced me last, as “Houdini’s Pinkerton bodyguard.”

Marsh had smiled at me and said, “Lovely! A Pinkerton. In the flesh. Wonderful!” He had turned to Lord Bob and his thin, mobile face had suddenly gone grave. “Lord Purleigh, permit me to offer you my condolences.
Irreparable is the loss, and patience says it is past her cure
. The Tempest.”

Lord Bob blinked. “Yes. Well. Thank you very much.”

Marsh leaned toward him. “Now, you’ll think me terribly rude,

I know, and I do beg your forgiveness, but is there some secluded little corner into which I can tiptoe with Mr. Beaumont? We’ve things to discuss.” He lowered his voice and his eyebrows. “Rather important matters, you understand. Hush hush.”

Lord Bob had seemed a bit surprised. By the request, or maybe by Inspector Marsh himself. Inspector Marsh would surprise almost anyone. But Lord Bob was a gentleman, and he said, “Well, yes. Yes, of course. There’s the library.”

“The library!” said Marsh, eyes wide with pleasure. “Perfect!” He cocked his head. “
Come and take choice of all my library, and so beguile thy sorrow
. Titus Andronicus.”

Lord Bob stared at him. Marsh turned to me. “Do you know the library’s location?”

I nodded.

“Lovely. Lady Purleigh. Lord Purleigh. Ladies and gentlemen. I hope you’ll all forgive this intrusion. Police, officialdom, nasty business you’ll be thinking, and I couldn’t agree with you more. But I do hope you’ll all bear with me whilst I briefly huddle with Mr. Beaumont. I do so much look forward to chatting with each and every one of you.”

Lord Bob wasn’t the only person staring.

And Marsh had turned to me, smiling. “Lead on, MacDuff. Now, as I sat there in the library, still in my shirtsleeves, I asked him, “Shall I start at the beginning?”

He smiled as if that was an idea he wouldn’t have thought of himself, and one he kind of liked. “Yes, at the beginning. The very commencement of things. Mr. Houdini hired you in the United States, did he?”

“Yeah.” I told him the whole story, the Great Man and Chin Soo in Buffalo, the failed attack at the Hotel Ardmore in Philadelphia, our trip to Paris and then to London, the wire from the agency telling me that Chin Soo had probably sailed from New York to Rotterdam.

After a while, March listened with his head resting against the back of the sofa, his eyes watching the ceiling. His right elbow was perched on the sofa’s arm, his forearm was raised and his index finger extended, its tip resting against the delicate hollow of his right cheek.

“Hmmm,” he said, still staring at the ceiling. He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “So, really, you’ve no evidence that this other magician ever arrived in England at all.”

“No,” I said. “But Houdini’s itinerary was published in the American newspapers before we left. And there was the wire from my agency. I had to assume that Chin Soo knew where to find him.”

He lowered his head and smiled at me. “But my dear fellow, of course you did. I’m in no way criticizing, I assure you. I’ve the utmost respect for your organization, and I’m confident you’ve acted with complete propriety. Absolutely certain of it. I'm merely organizing my thoughts.” He smiled and waved his hand. “
Unbridled children, grown too headstrong for their mother
. Troilus and Cressida.”

I nodded.

“So,” he said. “You arrived here on Friday night, yes?” “Right.”

“At what time would that’ve been?”

I told him. I told him about meeting the other guests, and about leaving the drawing room to return to the suite I shared with the Great Man. Told him I’d discovered that someone had gone through my bag, told him the Great Man had discovered that someone had tried to go through his.

“Aha,” he said. “The plot thickens. Was anything taken?” he asked me.

“No.”

“Didn’t you find that just a trifle curious?”

“No. There wasn’t anything worth taking.”

He smiled at Sergeant Meadows. "
They are but beggars who can count their worth
.” To me he said, “Romeo and Juliet.

“Uh-huh.”

“And you did—what exactly? Reported the attempted theft to anyone? To Lord Purleigh, perhaps?”

“No. Everything was still there. I went to bed. During the night I heard someone screaming.”

Marsh looked at Sergeant Meadows. “Thicker and thicker, eh, Sergeant?” He looked at me. “And did you make any attempt to discover the cause of this screaming?” He smiled his sly smile and waved his finger again. “If I know my Pinkertons, I’ll wager you did.”

“Yeah. It was Miss Turner, next door.” I didn’t mention that I was awake at the time, and talking to Cecily Fitzwilliam. I told him about the scene with Miss Turner and Mrs. Allardyce, Mrs. Corneille and Sir David.

“Wonderful!” he said, smiling brightly and raising his hands. “A ghost! I adore ghosts. Lord Reginald, you say.”

“She said. I didn’t.”

“No,” he agreed. “So you didn’t.” He leaned back. “And what sort of ghost was he, exactly? He wasn’t, by any chance, the sort who hobbled about with his head tucked beneath his arm?”

“No.”

“Rattling his chains?”

“No,” I said. “You want me to skip ahead? To what I found out about the ghost?”

He waved his hand quickly. “No, no, no. Please. I much prefer a straightforward narrative.
An honest tale speeds best being plainly told
.” Even when he didn’t tell you what play the quotation came from, you could still tell it was a quotation. His voice got more precise and even more delicate. “Tell me,” he said. “Was Miss Turner in any way harmed by this . . . visitation?”

“No. Shaken up. Frightened. Not harmed.”

He nodded. “And what then?”

“I went back to my room and back to sleep.”

“No more ghosts?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Pity. And the next day? Saturday?”

Someone knocked at the library door. “Come in,” Marsh called out.

The door opened and Briggs stepped in. He had no expression on his face this morning, but now he was carrying my coat and tie draped over his left arm. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Mr. Beaumont, sir, Lady Purleigh desired me to convey your clothing to you.”