Murder and Misdeeds (13 page)

She opened the curtains to see what sort of a day awaited her. The sky was a brilliant azure arc, with not a cloud in sight. She threw open the window. Branches of oak and elm stirred in the warm breeze. A pair of larks performed aerial acrobatics, swooping and wheeling and soaring, with the sun glinting golden on their wings. A muslin gown would be warm enough. She’d wear her new rose sprigged muslin with the empire waist. She turned to the clothespress to take it out ... and stared at the space where it had hung last night. She remembered she had put it beside the rose gown she had hung up.

The sprigged muslin was gone. The empty hanger jiggled mischievously in the breeze. She remembered the intruder last night, the quiet opening of that same door, the light chink of hangers on the metal bar. The man had stolen her gown! He had been an ordinary thief after all.

What else had he taken? She rushed about the room and found other items missing. Her new cashmere shawl— oh, and her reticule, with every penny she had brought with her. Silk stockings and underlinens were missing.

Her instinct was to run downstairs and tell Luten, but she had to dress first. There was no water in the water basin. She pulled the bell cord, but knew she would not be heeded. Too impatient to wait, she just threw on the same blue muslin gown she had worn the day before, scrabbled into shoes and stockings, ran a brush through her hair, and went darting to the morning parlor.

Luten, Prance, and a Coffen Pattle who looked as disheveled as she did herself arose punctiliously when she came pelting in. Luten and Prance looked as fine as ninepence. They had shaved, and their cravats were as immaculate and as intricately arranged as if they were on their way to Whitehall.

Prance took one look at her and said, “Not to give offense, dear heart, but don’t you think you should send for Mrs. Ballard?”

“I’ve been robbed!” she announced.

“Luten has been telling us of your ghastly experience,” Prance said, drawing out the chair beside him. “What a savage beast I am to have chastized you before commiserating on it. Small wonder if you look so
...
distraught.”

“What’s missing?” Luten asked her.

“He took my clothes.”

Prance was charmed to hear it. “A pervert!” he exclaimed. “And I feared the country would be dull. As you are wearing that charming gown—again—one assumes it is your more intimate items that are missing. A petticoat thief!”

“No, my new rose-sprigged muslin gown and cashmere shawl. Oh, and my reticule with ten pounds in it, to say nothing of that darling little French hand mirror you gave me, Reg, and a few other small items.”

“Gowns and gewgaws,” Coffen said, frowning. “Strange sort of thief. He didn’t touch the silver, and it wasn’t even locked up as it should have been.”

“I’ve been telling Prance and Coffen about your experience last night. We could find nothing missing down here,” Luten said. “Tobin assures me the silver is intact.”

As he spoke, his valet appeared at her elbow with a pot of coffee and a plate of breakfast. Simon had cooked breakfast and served it. This elegant creature held himself very high, but for a price, he had condescended to expand his duties. The coffee was black and hot. The poached eggs cooked
au point,
the toast neither black nor gray from ashes, but a nice golden brown. The bacon was crisp and not too fat. Even Prance, who felt eating was a great imposition on the intellectual life, was busy with his knife and fork, dismantling an egg.

“You’re sure it was a man?” Prance asked her. “As everything taken was for a woman, one wonders if some local wench hasn’t been ogling your gowns and decided to help herself to them.”

“It was a man,” she replied.

“Could have had her fellow steal them for her,” Coffen suggested.

“One would think he could wait until the gown was hung out to dry,” Prance said. “There was quite a rash of linen-napping from clotheslines in London last year. I lost half a dozen shirts. Strange that it should occur at this time, but it cannot have anything to do with Susan, can it? There is no limit to the reach of coincidence’s long arm.”

“I wonder if it has something to do with her,” Corinne said, scooping her fork into her eggs. “She left the house with only the clothes on her back. She must be wanting a change of gown by now. He wouldn’t know, in the dark, that it was my gown he took. And how did he get in? The lock hadn’t been tampered with.”

“I could open that lock myself with a piece of wire,” Prance said dismissively.

“What an accommodating kidnapper,” Luten said, with a lift of his eyebrows. “As it was a man who stole the gown, presumably he did it for Susan.”

“If that is the case, we need not fear that she is lying on a board in some cold shack, starving,” Prance said.

“What you said last night, Prance,” Coffen said. “About Soames having taken her and trying to talk her into marrying him.”

“It was Corinne’s theory that Soames took her. If she’s right, I expect he is trying to talk her into marriage.”

“Me, too. If that’s what he’s up to, he’d do whatever she said. Get her clothes for her if she asked him. I say we should have another go at Soames. There’s something odd afoot. I had Eddie watch his place last night. He never went home. Where was he?”

Prance’s eyebrows rose to his hairline. “You actually convinced Eddie to do your bidding?” he asked. “How much did you pay him?”

“A guinea. He only stayed until two
A
.
M
., but Soames hadn’t come home. Where was he till that hour?”

“Perhaps helping himself to Corinne’s gowns. It’s worth a try,” Prance agreed, and applied his knife and fork to a golden piece of toast. Eggs, he found, even well-cooked eggs, were too close to the barnyard to tempt him after all.

They were still at breakfast when Hodden arrived, hot from East Grinstead. He carried the staff of his office. Other than that, there was nothing to distinguish him from a petty clerk or businessman. He was a smallish, well-knit man of some forty-odd years. His blue serge jacket had shiny cuffs, his buckskins were dusty, and his top boots lacked polish. His face bore some resemblance to a rabbit, due to his protruding teeth, but his snuff-brown eyes were as sharp as bodkins.

“News, milord!” he exclaimed, rushing into the morning parlor. When he had the undivided attention of the table, he continued. “He’s struck again, the highwayman. A Mrs. Turner and her daughter from Dover were held up and relieved of a hundred pounds and their jewelry. A set of garnets and a pearl ring.”

“What time?” Luten asked.

“Just after eleven. The villain cut their team loose. They had to walk three miles into town. By the time they got there, the scamp was long gone, of course.”

“I might be able to give you a hand there,” Coffen said. “I happen to know where he keeps his nag.”

The snuff-brown eyes snapped angrily. “You might have told me, Mr. Coffen!”

“I’m telling you now, ain’t I?”

“Well, where is it?”

“In the shepherd’s hut.”

“There are nine shepherd huts in the neighborhood. Which one?”

“At McArthur’s burned-down place. I’ll show you.”

“I searched that little hut myself when we were looking for Miss Enderton. There was no mount there.”

“Well there was last night. And I’ve a pretty good notion who your highwayman is as well. Do you have a nag or did you come on shank’s mare?”

“I’m mounted,” Hodden said proudly.

After some conversation, it was decided that all the gentlemen would accompany Hodden, in case Soames put up a fight. Corinne didn’t argue when Luten suggested rather imperatively that she stay at Appleby. She had a few investigations she wished to make closer to home.

Hodden’s mount proved to be a mule, which slowed down their trip, but they did eventually reach the shepherd’s hut. The mare was gone.

“We’ll try young Soames’s stable,” Hodden said.

“You go ahead. I’ll catch up with you,” Coffen said. He went to look in the stream behind the hut. Trailing arms of willow dangled into the shade-dappled stream, where crystal-clear water gurgled over pebbles worn smooth by the water’s passing. He walked a quarter of a mile in both directions from the hut, but found no corpse facedown in the water. He was vastly relieved, for he had had a nightmare the night before that Susan was drowned in this very stream.

He was about to leave when the flash of something red at the bottom of the stream caught his eye. He fished it out, wetting his sleeve to the elbow as the stream was deeper than it looked, and found it to be a brooch made of faux diamonds and rubies. Curious, he examined the stream more closely and found a few other bits of cheap imitation jewelry. A fish-paste pearl ring, a pinchbeck watch chain and fob, and a string of glass beads. Loot that the highwayman had discovered to be worthless after he had time to examine it closely.

This confirmed that the missing mount belonged to the highwayman. It must be used only on those occasions when he planned a robbery, as there had been no mount there when Hodden searched. Perhaps the man rode through Grinstead on some other sort of mount and made his change here, which meant he had to sneak his scamp’s nag into the hut earlier. Easy enough to do after dark, with the concealment of the trees along the stream. It definitely pointed to a local fellow.

All they had to do was put a watch on the spot and catch him when he came back. Coffen whistled for his mount, threw his leg over it, and rode after the others. They all agreed that the cheap jewelry proved the highwayman was using the shepherd’s hut as a temporary hiding place for his mount.

When they reached Oakhurst, a modest mansion of stone, Mr. Soames’s housekeeper seemed almost glad to see Hodden. She was a tall, genteel lady in a white cap, with a white apron over her black gown.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“Know what, Mrs. Peel?” Hodden replied in confusion.

“That he’s missing. Mr. Soames didn’t come home last night. I was just about to send the footman for you. He’s not turned up dead!” she cried, and turned as pale as paper.

“He’s not turned up at all, Mrs. Peel. We can’t find him.”

“He stopped at Appleby last night on his way home from the auction,” Luten said. “He took dinner at the Rose and Thistle.”

“He does that sometimes when he’s late,” Mrs. Peel said. “So considerate. What do you think could have happened to him?”

“It might be best if I have a look about the place,” Hodden said. “It could give us an idea where he’s gone. Could you show me his study, Mrs. Peel?”

She was all in a fluster at showing such a troupe about the master’s house in his absence. She recognized the gentlemen, however, and knew that Luten was related to Soames. This seemed to set the seal on her approval.

“We won’t trouble you further, Mrs. Peel. You can just go about your business,” Hodden said in a kindly way.

“I’ll make coffee,” she said, and scurried off to the kitchen, happy for the diversion.

The gentlemen conversed quietly in Soames’s modest study. “He’s peeled off, it looks like,” Hodden said. “I’ll search his bedchamber. You, milord, might have a look over his account books and anything else that catches your interest. Letters, billets-doux, jewelry.”

“I’ll do the guest rooms,” Prance said.

“I’ll search his stable and barns,” Coffen added.

After three quarters of an hour of searching, they met in the saloon, where Mrs. Peel had provided coffee.

“Thank you, Mrs. Peel,” Hodden said. “I’ll have a word with you before I leave.”

She took the hint and returned to her kitchen.

“I found nothing suspicious,” Hodden said. “There was no cache of money in his room, no hidden jewels.”

“The timing of the robbery suggests Soames. He left the inn shortly before the Turner ladies were held up, but if he was the highwayman, you’d never guess it from his account books,” Luten added. “He was skating close to the edge of bankruptcy. The mortgage his papa saddled him with was the culprit, I fancy.”

“His own mount, the one he was riding last night, is in the stable,” Coffen said. “The groom says it came home alone sometime during the night. Looks as if Soames might have taken a tumble and be lying in the road with a broken neck. Either that or he knows we’re on to him and has shabbed off on the other mount.”

Hodden looked in confusion from one to the other. “Mr. Soames had only the one mount in his stable,” he said firmly.

“Perhaps he’s not the highwayman,” Prance said.

“I’m beginning to doubt he is, and I don’t give a damn,” Coffen said. “Did you find any sign he took Susan?”

“No, nothing,” Luten and Prance said.

“What, kidnapped Miss Enderton!” Hodden exclaimed. “Is that what you think? Oh, surely not. I could scarcely believe he was the highwayman but to do a thing like that! Soames was always a gentleman. He thinks the world of Miss Enderton. Why, for a while there, we expected a match between them.”

“Are you sure he was at the fair that day she disappeared?” Coffen asked.

“He was. He left early, but it wasn’t to kidnap Miss Enderton. He had an appointment with his banker.”

“Did he keep it?” Coffen asked.

“I’ll ask Fairly. That’s our bank manager.”

“Because if he didn’t—if he’s the one who took Susan, I mean—we might never find out where he’s got her, now that he’s disappeared. Sneaking her off to Gretna Green, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“He never took her,” Hodden said angrily. “We must organize a group to scout about for Soames. The parish is becoming a regular den of vice, what with highwaymen and kidnappers and now this.”

“We’ll start searching now,” Luten said.

“And keep an eye out for any sign of Susan while we’re about it,” Coffen added.

They discussed what direction each would take. It was, alas, Prance who found the mortal remains of Jeremy Soames, lying in a field half a mile from the road with his sightless eyes staring at the azure sky and his mouth fallen open in despair. The condition of his clothes and hands suggested that he had been trying to crawl home. The front of his jacket and his knees were well grimed, although he had turned over on his back to die. It was the bullet in his chest that prevented his making it home.