Into the Valley of Death (9 page)

“Why, only the wife of your deadly rival.”

“My rival? What do you mean?”

“Don’t you twig? That’s Mrs. Major Charteris, and her husband’s our new Chief Constable.”

“Oh, is the county Chief Constable here?” Miss Unwin said coolly. “I suppose he would be, if all the gentry of the neighbourhood are invited. But why do you call him my rival?”

“Well, I should think that’s plain. I’m beginning to wonder whether you’re much of a female detective after all.”

Miss Unwin thought quickly. She must regain her slipping reputation with this child. The imp was such a find as a source of knowledge.

“Ah, you mean that the Chief Constable was responsible for Jack Steadman’s arrest, and I am here to find him innocent?”

“Hit it right away.”

“Well, that’s as may be. But what I want now is a good chance of observing Mrs. De Lyall while I myself remain unseen.”

“Pooh, that’s easy.”

“Easy?”

“Yes, there’s a little gallery above the ballroom. Grandpapa told me once that when the ballroom was the great hall of the house, musicians used to play there. But it’d come tumbling down now if you tried to get all our band up into it, great fatties that they are.”

Once more, sharp words about personal remarks came into the head of Miss Unwin, governess. And once more Miss Unwin, detective, silenced them.

“Then lead me to your gallery,” she said. “Quickly, before anyone else comes and complains of the headache.”

“I can’t,” Phemy answered.

“What do you mean, you can’t? Listen, child, it is vitally important for me to set up a watch on Mrs. De Lyall. A man’s life may depend on it.”

Her fierceness did have the effect of wiping the grin off Phemy’s face.

“Oh, miss,” she said, “don’t be cross. I only meant I’ll have to tell you how to get to the gallery because I can’t come with you. Grandpapa’s awfully kind-hearted, but if he saw me going about the house dressed as I am, no stockings and everything, there’d be a most fearful row. He’d have an apoplexy on the spot.”

“Yes, of course, you’re quite right. You go back and hide where you were, but tell me first how to get to the gallery.”

Phemy’s instructions were complicated. But Miss Unwin forced herself to memorise them exactly. It was, truly, vital that she should be able to observe Mrs. De Lyall and, more important even, to watch the men who buzzed round this female honeypot.

In the end she found, hurrying through the house keeping respectfully close to the walls, that her young helper’s directions
had been needlessly involved. Within two minutes she was opening a small door in an upper passage. And then, to her quick satisfaction, she saw beneath her the brightly lit floor of the ballroom and heard coming up in bouncing waves of sound the music of the band, playing on a dais just underneath.

The gallery, she found, was conveniently shrouded in darkness and, needing only to untie the white apron at her waist, in her black cambric dress she could count on being invisible to anyone chancing to look upwards, even if she put herself at its very edge.

For a little while she watched the lines and circles of the dancers, forming and re-forming below, the swirl of spreading tulle skirts, the glint of jewels in hair and on bosoms, the white dazzle of starched shirt-fronts, the bright kaleidoscope of coloured uniforms. Nowhere could she spy, however, the bold red-and-black dress she remembered having seen when the lady guests had taken off cloaks and mantles.

What if Mrs. De Lyall was not dancing? She might well have declined and gone instead for some refreshment, accompanied, no doubt, by a male escort. And who would that be? And would his mere presence at the lady’s side be any proof that he was her secret lover and the murderer of Alfie Goode? Or would Mrs. De Lyall be in the conservatory? Was she there at this moment seated behind an enshrouding bank of thick-growing ferns, allowing someone a furtive embrace?

The cheerful music of a cotillion came to an end. The dancers dispersed.

But then into the middle of the empty floor there stepped a figure Miss Unwin recognised, even seeing only the top of his head. General Pastell.

“Ladies and gentlemen, fellow officers,” he said in parade-ground tones. “I am happy to tell you that I have just succeeded in persuading our good friend, Mrs. De Lyall, to dance for us her celebrated version of the famous Spanish
cachucha.”

There was a loud murmur of appreciation, with, Miss Unwin thought, more in it of masculine growl than feminine squeak.

Then the bold black-and-red dress she had looked for so keenly suddenly emerged on to the bare floor below. No doubt the General’s “persuasion” had taken place in some quiet corner, away from prying eyes. The band began to play, not very comfortably, a rhythmical, Spanish-sounding tune.

Mrs. De Lyall stood, head lowered, in the very middle of the floor, attentively waiting. And out of the surrounding circle of onlookers there came stepping towards her none other than Captain Brackham. He was carrying in front of himself a red velvet-covered box. He went up to the waiting danseuse and, with a military click of heels, held the box out to her. She opened it and took out what Miss Unwin recognised, from some illustration in a book for her young charges somewhere, as a pair of black castanets. In a moment she had them fastened round her wrists. Captain Brackham withdrew, and the lady began to dance.

Even seeing the performance from high above, it was plain to Miss Unwin that it was an altogether exciting affair. Whatever other qualities Mrs. De Lyall possessed, she certainly had dash. Watching her fling herself boldly backwards, arms above her head, castanets furiously clicking, two things became increasingly plain. The first was that the lady was clearly overstepping the bounds of feminine decorum, and the second was that almost all the gentlemen in the surrounding circle of onlookers were delighted that she should do so.

But was one of them more delighted than any of the others? Was Captain Brackham, who had been allowed to offer her the box of castanets, more favoured than the rest?

The music rose to a climax. Mrs. De Lyall swayed and swung till, from above, her wide red-and-black skirt looked
like a shimmering circle of fire. And then, with a final
“olé,”
the wild dance came to an end.

There was a storm of applause.

When at last it began to die down, General Pastell stepped forward to escort the dancer away. But he was not allowed to reach her.

Another figure came smartly out of the throng, a man of much the same age as the General.

“Gad, no, Pastell,” Miss Unwin heard his voice ring out. “You fellows of the Light Brigade have had more than your share of our dear friend’s charms this evening. It’s the turn of the boys of the Heavy Brigade now.”

The stout, middle-aged man marched bravely up to the exhausted dancer. “Madam, may I have the honour of taking you in to supper?”

“General Bickerstaffe,” came Mrs. De Lyall’s voice, tinged with just a hint of Spanishness, “I should be delighted.”

General Bickerstaffe, Miss Unwin said to herself. General Bickerstaffe, of the Heavy Brigade, those brave soldiers of the Crimea who had had their full glory dashed from them when the Light Brigade had made its blunder-led charge into the Valley of Death. Is he the man I am looking for, after all?

And it was true, she thought, that someone as comparatively aged and as socially respected as a general would be a great deal more likely to be Alfie Goode’s victim than someone younger and perhaps unmarried.

She decided that, if the supper hour had come, she had better get back to her post in the morning-room.

There she found that her services were much in demand. A good many ladies wished to make themselves more presentable before taking supper. For the best part of twenty minutes, she did not have a moment to think of her own affairs.

At the back of her mind, she hoped Phemy Pastell was still
in her hiding-place, and had the sense to do nothing that would give herself away while the room was occupied.

But at last the rush abated, and soon there were only two rather elderly ladies standing in front of the cheval glass put into the room for their use, each politely offering it to the other as they chatted.

“My dear, such an exhibition.”

“Yes, my dear. Disgusting is, I think, the
mot juste.”

“Indeed it is. And it was not that dance alone.”

“No, indeed. There was afterwards.”

“Poor Bickerstaffe is plainly besotted, my dear.”

“Yes. Yes. Such a pity. Such a brave man. Such a reputation.”

“Yes, indeed, although I must say that I never approved of that absurd rivalry of his with dear General Pastell. Why men can never talk to each other without wishing to quarrel like two barnyard cocks is more than I can imagine.”

“I am afraid your farmyard allusion is not far from the truth in this case, my dear. If you ask me, that woman is at the root of the whole rivalry.”

“But don’t you think that Captain Brackham …? I understand he is staying at the Fox and Hounds, not a hundred yards from her door, and is in her house from earliest morning till late at night.”

“If it is not the other way round, my dear.”

“Oh. Oh. Do you think so?”

“Well, I certainly heard through my maid, who seems to know one of General Pastell’s keepers rather better than she ought, that a person has been seen making his way through the De Lyall gardens at a very early hour.”

“Oh, my dear. Every day?”

“No. No, to tell the truth, I gather that this was some months ago and that it has ceased to happen recently. If what my Elmore says is at all correct.”

“But Captain Brackham was at the Fox and Hounds at that time?”

“History does not relate, my dear.”

And the two tittle-tattlers left the morning-room, oblivions of the discreet presence of a lady’s-maid in its far corner.

As soon as the door was shut behind them, Miss Unwin hurried over to the window and its heavy curtains.

“Phemy,” she whispered, “are you there?”

“Aren’t I just?” said Phemy, stepping out into the room. “And didn’t we just hear something?”

Miss Unwin longed to administer a rebuke. But the need to have the opinion of an expert on the revelations that had just come out was too strong.

“Do you think it was all more than just gossip?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, it was. Much more. I know Lady Horrocks’s maid, Elmore. She’s being courted by Grandpapa’s under-keeper, who talks to me like anything when there’s nobody by. So I expect it’s all true as true.”

“And Captain Brackham is the man in the garden? You’re sure?”

“Well, why else would he want to stay at the Fox and Hounds? It’s the worst inn for miles round. Everyone says so.”

“Then I have a good deal to think about,” Miss Unwin said.

“Are you going to denounce him?” Phemy asked, eyes bright. “Will you go right up to Major Charteris, the
great
Major Charteris, Victoria Cross, tell him that he and his merry men are quite wrong, and then unmask Captain Brackham as the real murderer?”

Miss Unwin smiled, despite her underlying concern. “Oh, if it were as easy as that,” she said. “But first I have got to find proof, hard and firm proof. Just going to the Chief Constable and announcing who I believe the real murderer is would never do.”

“No. Perhaps you’re right. Old Charteris is a fearful Tartar.”

Miss Unwin’s heart sank. She had hardly considered as yet how exactly she was to bring the affair to an end, so far from
even guessing at a solution had she felt herself. But now, when at last an active possibility had come to light, she contemplated with more than a little dismay the need to inform the fiery Major Charteris. After all, she, a mere governess, would have to convince the head of the county police that the efforts of his own men, in which he doubtless took pride, had been entirely misguided.

How would she do it? How
could
she do it? But she must. She must if Jack Steadman was not to be hanged in a little more now than four days.

And Jack Steadman himself, how did he fit into all this? How?

Miss Unwin was soon to feel she had an even stronger reason for going to Major Charteris and claiming he had been wrong to have Jack Steadman arrested, and this was to make her yet more perplexed about how she could tell him what she would have to without arousing the Tartar in him, which Phemy Pastell had spoken of with such relish.

As the ball came to its end, it was only the thought that she could not yet be certain in naming Captain Brackham as the true murderer that gave her some comfort. It was at least an excuse to put off the evil moment. There was always, after all, General Bickerstaffe still to be considered. Certainly a general would be a more likely victim of blackmail than a mere captain.

She wished she had had an opportunity of finding out more about General Pastell’s rival. But Phemy, when at last there had come a chance to talk to her safe from disturbance, had been overcome by such a tremendous fit of yawning that she had not had the heart to press her. Nor did she think a girl three parts asleep would be much help. Perhaps next day there would be an opportunity to see her again.

“Now, miss,” she said, “it’s high time you were getting back to your bed. You’ve been really helpful to me, but I don’t see there’s more you can do now.”

“Have I really helped?” Phemy asked, stifling yet another yawn. “Helped a real female detective? I’ll keep your secret, I promise, but I’ll be jolly proud in my heart of hearts as long. as I live.”

With that, she seemed content to leave. She slipped open
the window behind the red curtain, assured Miss Unwin that she could get back to her own room by the servants’ stairs “easy as a fish,” and vanished into the darkness.

General Pastell had, with a thoughtfulness Miss Unwin had not been surprised to learn of him, made sure that a groom with a dogcart was there when all the guests had gone to take herself and Vilkins back to the Rising Sun.

Settling down beside her friend in the starlit darkness, she asked herself whether the long night had been worthwhile.