Joan Smith Read online

  “I also am exciting, Peter,” I assured him.

  “We would do Peter a better service if we corrected his mistakes, rather than repeat them for our own amusement,” Mr. Sinclair said, in an odiously pompous way. He was right, of course, which did nothing to sweeten my temper.

  “I am excited too,” I corrected.

  “I don’t miss it for all the trees in China,” Peter went on. “A very excellent horse my cousin got me.”

  “Lord St. Regis was kind enough to have one forwarded for Peter’s use when he heard he did not have one with him,” Mr. Sinclair explained. “He has an excellent stable.”

  “I must compliment you on Nancy, Dr. Hill,” I said, to include the doctor in our talk. “She is a beautiful bit of blood. Arab and Percheron I think?”

  “That’s right. She was given to me in payment for a patient’s debt. We country doctors receive many of our fees in barter. She is too large for some folks, but she suits me, and I am happy to hear you can handle her, Miss Ford. Your aunt tells me you ride like a lancer, straight and hard. Nancy is gentle-mouthed for all her size.”

  “That is a prime goer you have, Mr. Sinclair. Out of St. Regis’s stable I fancy?”

  “Yes, a pure-bred Arabian.”

  I stared to think of this invalid on such a dashing mount. “Is Peter’s mount also an Arabian?” I asked.

  “A bay mare. Mine is a gelding. I’ve clocked him at forty miles an hour.” Then as soon as he had made this dashing speech, he sighed and drooped his head. “I hope this tea doesn’t keep me awake,” was his next utterance as he accepted a cup. I hoped so too. I preferred that he be sleeping soundly when I climbed up his wall.

  “I don’t sleep worth a brass farthing,” my aunt commented. “The past year I have not had a single good night’s rest, except when I take a sleeping draught. I need more laudanum, Walter. Will you tend to it?” He nodded. “Is it my age, do you think?”

  “You are young. When you get to my age is time enough to hint you are old.”

  “Oh, I am old all right. You get old at forty-six. That’s when it hits you. Everything goes on you. The eyes, the ears, the teeth. I used to be tall and thin; now I’m short and fat. I could understand being tall and fat, but I do not understand how I got short and fat.”

  “I expect that is my fault,” I said. “Did you feel short before I came?”

  “Not such an utter squab as I do now, but the past few years I cannot reach the top bookshelf, and I used to be able to.”

  “The arms may be shrunk,” Peter suggested, trying to follow our conversation.

  Mr. Sinclair took advantage of it to pour himself another cup of tea, having apparently forgotten his fears of insomnia. In a short while, Hill and Sinclair took their leave. Peter suggested we two take a romantical stroll in the moonlight. I would as soon have gone for a walk with an hyena, and told him so. He was flattered.

  I wished to change out of my good gown before climbing, and excused myself, intimating to Pierre it was a final good-night. “Now we shall discuss our business, Tante Louise,” he said, after kissing my hands a couple of times.

  My aunt directed a cautionary glance at him. I was curious enough what private business they had to discuss that I lingered a moment outside the doorway, pretending to have dropped something on the floor, lest a servant wander by and catch me eavesdropping.

  “Please not to frown, dear Tante Louise,” I heard Peter say. “You are thinking always too much about the monies. What sum shall I be getting this time? A thousand pounds, same like the last, yes?”

  “It is a great deal of money.”

  “Very much great. The silence is of gold, as we say. You are a naughty lady. But me, I get the monies, and I say no words to no one. Mum is the words. My cousin teached me these idioms.”

  “I don’t know where I shall ever find the money. But Justice must be done. You are correct, Peter. I am a naughty girl. I am willing to pay, however. A thousand pounds it is, and you must tell no one.”

  I was hardly able to get up from my crouching position on the floor, so great was my shock. Pierre was blackmailing his aunt at the rate of a thousand pounds a shot! Good God, no wonder she was purse-pinched. He was bleeding her white. I would not have thought him so devious. His way of talking gave one the notion he was frank and open, almost to a fault, but that was his trouble with the language leading him astray. I went upstairs, my head pounding with anger, and my heart pulsing with a determination for revenge.

  Chapter Seven

  It was a fine night for murder. A white fingernail of moon floated in an ink-black sky, with a sprinkling of stars discernible after our eyes became accustomed to the darkness. There was a translucent rag of cloud chasing the moon, which followed us as we hastened through the park, down to the gatehouse. The only sound was the whisper of those towering oaks and elms. An hour had elapsed since the departure of the guests, time enough for Aunt Louise, who accompanied me, and myself to have donned dark gowns, and, we hoped, time for Mr. Sinclair to have retired. The signs were propitious. The gatehouse windows were dark.

  Night had the inexplicable effect of making the house much taller than usual, the walls more sheer, the trellis much more rickety and unstable. “You’ll not have a bit of trouble,” Loo said bracingly as she reached out to shake the trellis. A piece of thoroughly rotted wood, soft as a bread crumb, came off in her fingers. Undismayed, she went on, “The thing to do is to grab on to the vine. The vine is as sturdy as may be.”

  I do not know in what manner Gloria intended scrambling up the wall, but I had taken the precaution of wearing gloves, an old pair of white kid ones that my aunt did not detect in the shadows. The vine proved more solid than the trellis. Its main trunk was a couple of inches thick. I stuck with the main branch. The major difficulty, and it was no small one, was in discovering footholds. These were available at those points where a hefty minor branch left the mother trunk, but unfortunately they were not so closely or evenly spaced as a climber could wish.

  I took mental note of all the physical discomforts Gloria was being subjected to: the fingers turning numb as they clutched at spiky knobs of hardened wood, the cheek grazed by assorted protrusions, the skirt destroyed beyond repair as it caught on every stray twig and was nearly pulled from my body, the back aching from the peculiar gyrations it was being subjected to, most of all, the stomach in a state of violent agitation from fear of detection and falling. Aunt Loo’s part in the whole was to hold the vine steady for me, as though it were a ladder.

  The thick trunk petered out as I rose up the sheer face of the wall. It was only stubbornness that kept me going through the several eternities till the window ledge was within my grasp. I knew I had never been a fly in any previous life. The climb was quite terrifying. Finally I placed my rigid fingers on the ledge and heaved myself up till my cheek leaned against the pane of glass.

  The room beyond was in total darkness; it was scanty reward for my arduous climb. I intended doing no more than catching my breath before climbing, or possibly falling, back down. While I leaned against the ledge, gasping, a light bobbed into view beyond, in the depths of the building. It was not in the room whose window I was at, but in the hallway. I came to sharp attention, watching it, and trying to discover who was the bearer of the light.

  It was the absence of green glasses that misled me. Within seconds, Welland Sinclair loomed into the doorway of the room, then entered, not at his customary lagging invalid’s amble, but with a long, steady stride. He set the lamp on a dresser and turned to talk to someone over his shoulder. A man followed him into the room, a footman in dark green livery, or possibly a valet, as Mr. Sinclair was in the process of undressing. He had already removed his jacket and was unbuttoning his flowered waistcoat as he spoke.

  Also while Sinclair spoke, the valet went down on his knees and began rooting under the canopied bed in the corner. While the master pulled off his waistcoat and threw it on a chair, the valet staggered under the weight of a metal bo
x, roughly a foot square, which he hefted up to the bed. Sinclair said something else over his shoulder, and the valet left, soon returning with a set of keys dangling from his fingers. Then, while Sinclair proceeded to undress, untying his cravat and pulling it off, the man unlocked the box. I was on pins for Sinclair to go forward and open the box, but instead he removed his shirt and walked to a pier glass to do a bit of posturing in front of the mirror, in the style of Gentleman Jim Jackson. When he stopped this nonsense, he struck a pose of a Bartholomew Fair strong man, flexing his muscles and throwing out his chest, all the while admiring himself in the mirror. He bent his arms up in front of him in right angles, inviting the valet to come and admire his biceps.

  It was rather an amusing show. After squeezing the biceps, the valet stepped back. Next he advanced with his fists curled and landed Sinclair a blow in the diaphragm. Sinclair pretended not to feel it, though he did in fact wince noticeably. The master then retaliated, “feinting” a few punches, as my brothers would say, at the valet’s face and shoulders. After a bout of boyish boxing, Sinclair at last walked to the bed and lifted the lid of the box. I strained forward so hard I was afraid I would bend the glass. It did not occur to me to worry they would see me. They were too well involved in their own business.

  What was drawn out of the box was a pile of bills about two inches high. Even if the denominations were small, there was a considerable bit of blunt there for a poor relation. Possibly even a thousand pounds. I remembered that Pierre and Welland were very close, and while it had been difficult to see Pierre as a blackmailer, it was not difficult to see him as a dupe for his rogue of an English cousin.

  Loo was beginning to make inquiries from below as to my reason for staying so long at the window. She would have seen the light and be worried. I risked removing one hand from the windowsill to wave her to silence. It was very nearly my undoing. I pitched back precariously, but my one hand held firm, and soon I was back safely at my perch. The short space of time was long enough for Sinclair to have extracted more goodies from his traveling vault. It was a jeweled necklace that hung from his fingers. He made some facetious remark to the valet, holding the jewel up by its two ends against the man’s throat. He next tossed it carelessly on the bed and took out a large ring, whose solitary stone caught the lamplight to reflect a blinding prism of light.

  All the while the two men chatted amiably, jokingly. The various items were returned to the box. Then, as if on impulse, Sinclair reached in and took the money out again. When he left the room, he carried it in his hand, weighing it, as though it were a brick. The footman or valet, whatever he was, relocked the box and pushed it back under the bed. He walked out behind Sinclair, his lamp highlighting the smooth ripple of muscles on his master’s naked back. It was a handsome back.

  There was nothing more to do but descend the vine, one painful step at a time, repeating all my agonies of the ascent. “How did it go?” Aunt Loo asked eagerly.

  “I’ll tell you when we get home,” I replied, gasping too hard to enter into lengthy explanations as we nipped quickly up through the park.

  We had cocoa served in my aunt’s room as a reward for our job. She had her pen out, wanting to get down my observations while they were fresh in my head. This had to be done first, before she would listen to the important news.

  “Impossible,” was her firm declaration when I told her Sinclair had a wad of bills big enough to choke an elephant. “He has not a sou to his name. He is St. Regis’s pensioner. If he makes two hundred a year, I would be very much surprised.”

  “He had it, and he had valuable looking jewelry too.”

  “Stage money and paste jewels. St. Regis holds little amateur theatricals at Tanglewood, you must know.”

  “Why would Sinclair have brought them with him? He is not holding any amateur theatricals here, but doing research for his treatise.”

  “It is odd, but there must be some explanation for it. Red stones in the necklace, did you say?”

  “Yes, rubies or at least garnets, and a ring with a diamond as big as my eyeball.”

  “Very strange indeed,” she allowed, frowning. “It sounds very like the Huit Rubis necklace, but it cannot be that.”

  “It was not wee; it was very large.”

  “It is the French again, dear. There are eight rubies in it, you see—huit rubis, like our trois fenêtres. It would be so much more pleasant if they would give things English names, but the jewel is old, like the house. It is quite ugly. I never wear it.”

  “You mean it is your necklace?”

  “The Huit Rubis necklace is mine. In a manner of speaking, I mean. I have the use of it during my lifetime, but it is entailed on St. Regis on my death, of course, like everything else. Pest of a man. What does he want with a ruby necklace and another diamond ring? He has a vault full of heirlooms already.”

  “Is the diamond ring yours as well?”

  “I have one that sounds like it, the St. Clair diamond.”

  “Where are they? I mean, where do you usually keep them? For they are at this moment under Mr. Sinclair’s bed in a black box, and we must call a constable at once to get them back.”

  “That is not at all necessary. Mine are in my own safe.”

  “Have you checked recently?”

  “Not since I left, but ...”

  “Auntie, you must see Sinclair stole them during your trip! Let us look at once.”

  She began her chest expanding and poohing again, but I would not let her off with it. She led me to a vault that was hidden behind a double pedestal desk, right there in the room we sat in. It was necessary to get down on the hands and knees to reach the door, then necessary also to bring a lamp for her to see to work the combination of the safe. After these necessities had been taken care of, she lifted out a green leather case and opened it to show me not only the Huit Rubis necklace and big diamond solitaire, but several other gorgeous bibelots as well. There were earrings and brooches, other rings and bracelets, mostly in diamond and rubies.

  “The Sinclairs had some business dealings in the east. The rubies are from Burma, and the diamonds from India. Try them on, if you like.”

  I lifted a glittering tiara of diamonds from the box and went to the mirror to regard myself. I looked like a queen, if I do say so myself. I also felt an uncharacteristic urge to grab the thing and run like the devil. I don’t know what it is about diamonds; they turn a law-abiding citizen into a coveter of her neighbor’s goods. Slowly, I removed the tiara and put it back in its box, declining the offer to submit myself to more temptation.

  “So it is plain as a pikestaff Sinclair did not get them from here,” she concluded.

  That point had to be admitted, but it explained nothing. It was not till my cocoa cup was empty that the explanation descended on me. “He means to steal them! He has got descriptions of them somehow from St. Regis and had paste copies made to substitute so you won’t notice the theft.”

  There was more poo-poohing, but in my mind, the mystery was solved. It remained only to convince my aunt and get her to put them in some safer place, such as a bank vault. She was not about to be convinced in one night, however, and I was quite exhausted from my endeavors, so did not belabor my point.

  “It still doesn’t explain the money either,” I remembered as I walked toward the door.

  “No, indeed it does not,” she agreed.

  “Unless he got it from Pierre.”

  “That is entirely possible. Pierre is very generous.”

  “He can afford to be!” I pointed out, in an ironic vein, hoping to give her a hint I knew something of the source of St. Clair’s wealth, but she was being obtuse.

  “Yes, he’s rich as a nabob. You have done a good night’s work, Gloria. Tomorrow I shall clean up these notes I have got, put them into the story. Then you will have to carry a man across the meadow and jump the tollbooth, and your work will be over.”

  I felt my real work in rescuing Auntie would be only beginning, but there
was something about the image of that enormous tollbooth advancing at me that tended to dry up any words except, “Good night, Auntie.”

  Chapter Eight

  We settled for a sack of oats in lieu of a man to be carried across the meadow. It was clear from the outset our hero would have to be very emaciated indeed, not more than a hundred pounds, if Gloria were actually to carry him. Rather than have the poor fellow worn to a thread, a donkey was introduced into the story. We decided Gloria could get a man of a hundred and fifty pounds on to the back of a donkey, if he were able to give a little help himself. This interfered with the poignancy of Gloria’s fearing he was dead, till I pointed out his body could become as lifeless as she liked once he was on the donkey. A groom was ordered to get across a mule’s back with his head hanging down one side, his feet the other, while Aunt Loo looked to see which was more pathetic, a hand dragging in the dust, or a head thumping against the donkey’s flank. This was done first thing in the morning, before Auntie went to her scriptorium.

  After she had gone, I prepared myself for my ride with Pierre. It was my intention to pick his brain, in a subtle way, to see what I could find out about the mysterious business of the thousand pounds blackmail.

  First I had to admire the “most excellent animal” Sinclair had provided him. She was excellent too, a bay—-well-muscled, deep-chested, long-legged. All this excellence was quite wasted on Pierre. He was an indifferent rider, who chose a walk as the best pace for carrying on the dalliance that was his main purpose of riding at all. As it suited my true purpose, I gave him no trouble.

  Due to his strange way with words, I could not make heads or tails of what he said. He either misunderstood or pretended to misunderstand my every word. “I expect you lost your inheritance in France as a result of the revolution, Peter,” I began, in a commiserating manner.