Escapade (25 page)

“Okay, Mr. Briggs,” I said. “Thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome, sir.” He gave a small bow and then he turned and sailed off. He stopped at the library entrance, opened that door, and turned back to me. “Shall I leave this opened, sir, or closed?”

“Closed,” I told him.

“Very good, sir,” he said, and he glided through it and pulled it shut behind him.

I reached into my coat pocket and slid out the Colt automatic and I pointed it at the door. Without bending over, I slipped off my shoes. Silently, in stocking feet, I padded around the sofa until I was about six feet from the closet door.

“Okay,” I said. “You in the closet. Come on out of there.”

The Evening Post

Maplewhite, Devon

August 18 (again)

Dear Evangeline,

So much has happened, and within so few hours, that I honestly don’t know where to begin.

It’s really a hopeless task, Evy, scribbling these letters. Life keeps overtaking my account of it. I feel like Sisyphus, but poor Sisyphus had only a single paltry boulder to fret over, and shove about. Every time I succeed in wrestling one of my boulders up the hill (and into the post), another boulder trundles down the slope, knocks me down, and rumbles over me.

Where was I? I had just fainted gothically from my horse, I believe, at the close of the last letter. According to Mrs Corneille, I should have hurtled to the gravel pathway, had Mr Beaumont not swiftly interposed himself between me and it. He is, perhaps, rather more useful than he appears to be. (And it transpires that he is not what, since he arrived, he has claimed to be. More on this later.)

It was all a dreadful bother after that, people hovering over me and coddling me and whisking me off to bed. Mrs Corneille enlisted Dr Auerbach to examine me, which he did with a dreadful bedside manner, all fumbling thumbs and darting glances. He hasn’t practiced medicine for some time, he told me; and I can easily believe him. His prognosis was certainly less than accurate; he told me that “there might be some small bruising”; in fact I am turning, rather spectacularly, into an aubergine.

Like everyone else, he asked why the horse had bolted; and I told him, as I’d told everyone else, that it had seen a snake. Psychoanalysts, as perhaps you know, are invariably fascinated by snakes, and he wanted to know what sort of snake it had been. I explained that I was not on familiar terms with snakes, and that, even if I had been, my nearsightedness made me a less-than-scrupulous observer. My eye-glasses, I explained, had been in the

pocket of the riding jacket. This seemed to satisfy him.

He left; Lady Purleigh visited and was, as usual, utterly charming; I wrote another letter; the Allardyce arrived and dragged me from bed to attend tea.

I really must tell you about Cecily. I’m a perfect witch to babble about it; I’ve actually considered not mentioning it at all. Truly I have. But, after much serious thought, I’ve concluded that it’s simply too savory to let slip away. Have compassion for me, Evy; I’m a doomed woman.

When the Allardyce and I were leaving our room, on our way to tea, I opened the door and discovered the Honourable Cecily standing out in the corridor with Mr Beaumont. (She was, of course, looking very smart, in a drop-waist dress of burgundy silk with billowing bishop sleeves and a draped neckline.) The two of them had evidently been arguing, and she was saying—quite loudly, almost shouting it—that she
wasn't
a nymphomaniac.

Wasn’t
a nymphomaniac. Isn’t that astounding?

After we joined them out there, she attempted to put a good face and a plummy voice on everything, but she was transparently upset.

The two of them are having an affair, Evy. The daughter of the manor is secretly cavorting about, and with an American personal secretary (except that he’s not, really, and I’ll be coming to this). What other possible explanation for that remarkable announcement could there be?

Cecily is nicer, certainly, than I’d originally believed (she was really quite charming in her room); but could she actually be more
interesting
?

And doesn’t her heated denial suggest to you that she was, just then, refuting an accusation? And doesn’t that suggest to you
that
Mr Beaumont was, in this particular chase, the pursued and not the pursuer?

If she
is
cavorting, what on earth does she see in him? He’s good-looking enough, in a sullen, lumbering, American sort of way, but altogether too smirky and arrogant for my tastes.

Socially, of course, for someone like Cecily, he is hopeless, either as a personal secretary or as a private detective. (Have I mentioned that he’s a private detective?) Unless, on the other hand, he’s secretly a fabulously wealthy American financier masquerading as a private detective masquerading as a personal secretary. Which, given everything else that’s transpired here, is entirely possible.

What’s certain is that I shall be keeping a watchful eye on Cecily, to decide whether I can go back to belittling her; or whether I shall be forced, however reluctantly, to start admiring the wench.

We shall be getting to this private detective business in a moment.

Cecily was there, at tea time, having arrived (alone) shortly after the Allardyce and me. She sat at the table with us, and with Lady Purleigh, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the medium Madame Sosostris, and her husband, a Mr Dempsey.

Mrs Corneille, Sir David, and Dr Auerbach sat at another table, toward the far side of the room. Mr Houdini sat away by himself, scribbling something in a notebook, and occasionally looking up to smirk in the direction of Madame Sosostris.

Mr Dempsey and she look like Jack Sprat and his wife: he is tall and gaunt and cadaverous; she is round and roly-poly, fatter even than the Allardyce. Her gaudy silk robe, and her several layers of cosmetics, make her resemble a circus clown.

What a shrew I am. I should be kinder to the woman: she is crippled, poor thing, and gets about in a wheelchair.

Sir Arthur is besotted with her. Not (I think) in any sexual or romantic way; yet still besotted. He hangs upon her every banal word, nods gravely at her every dreary observation. (Even crippled people can be banal and dreary, it seems.)

He himself is a man much taller than I expected, at least six feet, four inches in height, who resembles a retired brewer more than a famous author: big and bluff and hearty, with a huge charming smile. He seems so typically English and matter-of-fact, so solid and commonplace, that his wholehearted belief in Spiritualism struck me at first as preposterous; and then, after a time, as rather sad.

The Afterlife was the subject of discussion. Sir Arthur was

telling us that Death was no ending, but instead a wonderful doorway from this world to the next; very much, evidently, like the entrance to Harrods. In the Afterlife, he said, our existence will be substantially the same as it has been here, except that There we shall be spared all petty annoyances and physical discomforts. Which is not, as you know, altogether true of Harrods.

‘But what about servants?’ asked the Allardyce, who can always be relied upon to raise the level of discourse. ‘There will be servants, won’t there? There are so
many
things, after all, that one can no longer do for oneself.’ Such as packing and unpacking the luggage.

Sir Arthur smiled. As I said, he has an enormously charming smile. He is, I think, a genuinely kind and good man who believes everyone else to be as fundamentally decent and honest as he is. This would naturally render him susceptible to someone like Madame Sosostris, and polite to someone like the Allardyce.

‘There is no need for servants there,’ he said. ‘All our wants and needs will be provided us.’

All of them? I wondered, and glanced at Cecily, who was, so far as I knew, the only other potential nymphomaniac at the table.

She was pensive, perhaps wondering the same.

‘And we ourselves,’ Sir Arthur continued, ‘will be cast in new forms, strong and healthy and vibrant.’ He leaned toward Madame Sosostris. ‘Is that not as you understand it, madame?’

‘Yaas,’ she said. Her accent is odd, something Middle European, but not German, I think. ‘However, ifve are do-ink t’e sort of important verk dat requires us an assistant, one vill be given for us.’

I suspect that, like the Allardyce, when she dropped anchor on the Other Shore Madame S. would be expecting someone else to unpack the luggage.

Mr Beaumont arrived in the drawing room then, and Sir Arthur brought him over to the table, for introductions. The Honourable Cecily was pointedly indifferent to the American’s presence. After he left, she returned to her pensiveness. Sir Arthur returned to his Afterlife.

Suddenly, Lord Purleigh arrived. He looked harried, his white hair frazzled, his splendid moustache unkempt. He apologized to us, hurriedly, for his tardiness, and told Lady Purleigh that there had been some sort of accident in the Earl’s room, that the door was inexplicably locked. He would return, he said, after obtaining the assistance of Mr Houdini and trying again. He left the room with Sir Arthur, Mr Houdini, and Mr Beaumont. At this point, Mr Beaumont was still a personal secretary.

After they left, Cecily turned to Lady Purleigh and leaned forward to put her slender hand along her mother’s slender arm. ‘Mummy,’ she said, ‘Grandpere’s all right, isn’t he?’

This would have sounded affected and insipid, perhaps, if not for the genuine fear in Cecily’s voice.

Lady Purleigh was clearly agitated herself, but she forced a small smile and she patted Cecily’s hand. ‘I do hope so, darling.

He must be, mustn’t he?’

Madame Sosostris spoke. ‘You need not to vorry,’ she intoned. ‘Vatever happens, it is part of de Great Plan. It is for de best.’

‘Yes,’ said Lady Purleigh, rather uncertainly. ‘Yes, of course.’ Lord Purleigh returned within half an hour or so, looking very grim. He nodded abruptly to us, apologized again, and asked Lady Purleigh and Cecily to come with him for a moment. Lady Purleigh made her excuses and the three of them left the room. Cecily looked, for the first time since I’ve been here, confused and rather lost.

After the three of them left, for several minutes a kind of social limbo prevailed.

Have I mentioned that Lord Purleigh’s father, the Earl, is bedridden? I think that with all these alarums and excursions, most of us believed that something quite awful had happened to him. No one spoke; no one, perhaps, knew what to say. The Allardyce, consumed no doubt by worry, consumed a smoked salmon sandwich.

When he returned, alone, Lord Purleigh looked even grimmer than he had before. He stalked across the drawing room, spoke sofdy for a moment to the people at Mrs Corneille’s table. They all arose and followed him over to us, everyone moving silently. Apprehension seemed to congeal in the air. Some chairs were arranged, and we were transmuted from an afternoon tea into a solemn audience, with Lord Purleigh as the solitary, somber performer.

He was still standing, very formal, his hands held tautly at his sides. “Wanted to tell all of you,” he said. “Been a bit of an accident. My father, the Earl. Wounded himself. Gun went off. Potting at pigeons. Nothing serious, mind. Scratch, really. Barely broke the skin. Alice and Cecily, they’re attending to it. Won’t be long. Forgive them their absence, eh? Stay here, if you like. Return to your rooms, wander about. As you like. Dinner will be served at the usual time.”

There was a kind of soft, general letting out of breath, as though the room itself were sighing with relief.

Lord Purleigh nodded once, briskly, and then turned away, about to leave. He caught himself and turned back. ‘There is, sorry to say, one further unpleasantness.’ He paused, and a shadow passed across his face. ‘That rifle shot of yesterday.’ He looked toward me, with what I flatter myself was kindness. ‘I had believed it fired by a poacher.’ He addressed the crowd. ‘Turns out I was mistaken. One of my guests, Mr Houdini, is being stalked by a madman. From all accounts, he was the fellow fired the shot. But there’s no cause for alarm. Some police will be arriving from Amberly shortly.’

‘But Robert,’ said the Allardyce, ‘who is this man?’

A tartness came over Lord Purleigh’s face. ‘A stage magician. Rival of Houdini’s. Fellow named Chin Soo.’

‘A
Chinaman!
’ exclaimed the Allardyce.

Tart became bitter. ‘No, not a Chinaman,’ he said. ‘Chin Soo’s a stage name. We don’t really know much more about him.’ His face softened. ‘Not to worry, though. Everything’s under control. Police’ll be here soon. And, as it happens, Mr Houdini’s secretary is actually a Pinkerton.’ He said this rapidly, as though it were an embarrassment he wished to move quickly beyond.

This was not to be, of course, so long as the Allardyce was present. ‘A what?’ she said.

‘A private detective,’ he said, impatience flaring out briefly.

‘An enquiry agent, from America. Assigned to protect Mr Houdini.’

I wondered if Cecily knew. Would Mr Beaumont have told her?

‘Now,’ Lord Purleigh said, ‘if you’ll excuse me.’ He turned and strode away.

As soon as he was gone, the Allardyce looked around herself like an anxious walrus on an ice floe. ‘Chin
Soo
?’ she said. 

‘
Gesundheit
,’ said Sir David.

As I said before, he can be clever; he’s simply not so clever as he thinks he is. No human being possibly could be.

‘Oh David,’ said Mrs Corneille wearily. ‘This is not the time.’ 

‘On the contrary,’ he said, smiling that infuriating ironic smile of his. ‘Nothing eases tension like a bit of drollery, don’t you think?’ He turned to Dr Auerbach. ‘This would be the ideal moment for one of your English jokes, Doctor.’

I have no idea what he meant by this. Dr Auerbach had told me no jokes, certainly, English or otherwise, while he was conducting his examination. Whatever Sir David might have meant, Dr Auerbach smiled and shook his head slightly. ‘I am thinking not, Sir David.’

Sir David returned to Mrs Corneille. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I must say that I’m not surprised to learn about Beaumont. He always struck me as rather shifty and seedy, exactly the sort to be prying into people’s private affairs.’