Poppy (24 page)

“Yes, another time. Now, go away—wait a bit!” The duke put down his newspaper and looked fully at his man of business for the first time. “Who handles my—Freda von Dierksen’s business?”

MacDonald looked at his master curiously, and longed to ask him why he simply did not ask his fiancée himself. Nonetheless, he said, “I have reason to believe it’s a Mr. Duggan up in Cheapside.”

“And he would handle the purchase of any property?”

“Aye, just so. But he’s a close-mouthed rascal, and he’ll not be giving me any information.”

“Then get me a burglar,” said the duke impatiently. “The best you can find.”

“Ah, Your Grace will have his little joke. I call to mind—”

“Call this to mind,” said the duke, leaning forward and tapping MacDonald on one chubby knee. “When I say I want a burglar, I mean I want a burglar. You’re my man of business, so stop sitting there with your mouth open and start businessing!”

Poppy’s jailer, for all her grim appearance, was a woman with a bad conscience. Her name was Greta Meyer, and she had been brought over from Freda’s household in Germany, where she acted as housekeeper. She was being paid highly to obey her mistress’s instructions to the letter. Poppy was to be kept dirty and degraded and out of sight.

But Greta was lonely and worried. The other servants were English, and although Greta only knew a few words of English, she had sufficient intelligence to recognize a very low type of being when she met it.

She had no fear of the law, for she had come to think of her mistress as above the law. Had not Mr. von Dierksen died after dinner one night, under very suspicious circumstances, and hadn’t they all been sure the mistress had had a hand in it? But the next thing the servants knew, the chief of police had become a regular visitor to the house, and before you knew it, the coroner was passing a verdict of accidental death, and all inquiries had been stopped.

Greta wished the girl had not sung that day those men were passing. The tune, haunting and pleading and lovely, still rang in her ears. She hated to see the girl, who had been so lovely when she had first arrived, turn white and dirty and gaunt. The men-servants who formed Greta’s bodyguard had conveyed to her, by means of a tattered German-English dictionary, that they were going to travel to the nearest village for a night out, and Greta had been glad to see them go.

She stood by the kitchen door, staring over the wilderness of the neglected garden. The evening light was mellow and golden, and the air was very sweet. She thought of the rank, foul-smelling air in her prisoner’s room and shuddered.

She walked slowly back to the kitchen and picked up the dictionary. Perhaps if she bound her prisoner with a strong rope, she could lead her out into the garden while the men were away, and perhaps the girl might sing again.

Greta searched through drawers and cupboards until she came across a stout length of clothesline. Feeling easier in her conscience, she mounted the stairs to tell her prisoner the good news.

Poppy was lying, as usual, with her face to the wall. Greta approached the bed. “Frau Plummett,” she said, and Poppy twisted around, amazed to hear her jailer actually speak. “Frau Plummett,” said Greta, holding out the rope. “
Herren
—men—gone out. You… me in garden go. Yes? I tie.”

Poppy stared at her, feeling her own muscles tense. She nodded, and Greta bent over her with the rope.

With the strength of a madwoman, Poppy fell upon her. Greta was completely taken by surprise, and although she was much stronger than Poppy, Poppy was fighting for her life. At one point however, Poppy felt her strength begin to ebb. The prison walls were closing about her again, and as she struggled and punched and bit and scratched, she saw the heavy water jug standing on the table, and freeing one arm, she picked it up and brought it down as hard as she could on Greta’s head.

Greta subsided with a moan, and with trembling, shaking hands Poppy trussed her up. She made a rush for the door, and then hesitated. Greta had tried to be kind. She turned back and, stooping over the other woman, felt her pulse. To her immeasurable relief, it was beating steadily.

Than Poppy ran headlong down the stairs and out into the cool evening air. There was nobody about. The fields and marshes stretched out before the end of the weedy garden on the other side of a small country road. Picking up her skirts, and dimly registering with surprise that she had had the sense to seize her reticule, Poppy took to the fields, running and running, feeling the light evening air rushing past her face, dreading every moment to hear the shouts of pursuit.

After what seemed a very long time she came to a clear, still pool surrounded with stunted willows.

She looked slowly around. There was not a living soul in sight, except a sparrow hawk hovering motionless in the air.

Slowly she took off every stitch of clothing and plunged into the pool, ducking her head under the water, running her fingers through her hair and wishing she had a bar of soap. Then she washed out all her clothes and spread them out on the willows to dry. The air was very tranquil and warm. She sat naked and uncaring beside the pool, keeping her mind a careful blank.

At last when her clothes were almost dry Poppy put them on and began to stride across the marshes, which had been burned dry and brown by the heat of the early summer.

Soon her hair dried, and she took out a comb and tidied it carefully, twisting it up in a knot on the top of her head.

As darkness fell she saw the twinkling lights of a town in the distance and headed straight toward it.

Poppy strode through the evening streets of the town at a steady pace. She walked under the blue lamp of the police station, never once thinking to go in and ask for help. All Poppy wanted was to get home to Emily and Josie.

Revenge and reports to the police and all the slow wheels of justice could be set in motion. But not tonight.

The wooden, chaletlike structure of a small railway station loomed up. She was in luck. There was a slow train to London, due in a few minutes. Calmly she paid for a first-class ticket to Victoria Station, and sat on the platform, waiting for the arrival of the London train.

Poppy was going home. She was alive… she was free. And nothing else mattered.

The Duke of Guildham sat in his club, feeling more desolate than he had ever before felt in his life. He had had such hopes of MacDonald’s cat burglar. But although the man had successfully broken into the offices of Mr. Duggan, and had removed all papers pertaining to Mrs. von Dierksen’s business, there was nothing to give a clue to Poppy’s whereabouts—no mysterious purchase of property in a secluded part of the country. The duke had wearily decided that Freda had either spirited Poppy out of England, or had had a house bought for her by someone else.

The wedding was set for a month’s time. However, he realized that Freda had been extremely stupid. If he found Poppy alive and well, or dead, or whatever she was, so long as she was out of Freda’s clutches, then he would first file for divorce and then make sure Freda appeared at the Old Bailey to answer for her crimes. He knew Freda thought he would wish to hush up any scandal and that that would keep her safe from justice, and he had let her go on believing it.

“Hullo, Guildham!” The duke looked up impatiently into the unlovely features of Sniffy Vere-Smythe. “Mind if I join you?” said Sniffy, sitting down opposite.

“Yes, very much.”

“Ha! Ha! You will have your little joke,” said Sniffy heartily. “Congrats on your engagement, old boy. Just got back from Essex. Y’know, most ’strordinary thing happened.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” said the duke. “Do make a noise like a hoop and bowl off.”

“Most ’strordinary thing, but technology explains everything,” said Sniffy wisely.

The duke half rose from his chair to escape.

“I mean, I thought it was that Plummett woman’s ghost.”

The duke sat down again and stared at Sniffy.

“Tell me about it,” he said.

But Sniffy, in the infuriating way of his kind of club bore, seemed anxious to go once he had an interested audience.

“Tell you another time.” He yawned. “Golly, I’m
tired
.”

“You’ll be dead if you don’t tell me,” said the duke wrathfully. “God, you’ve been boring me for years, and you finally come up with something of interest—”

“Oh, if you’re going to be like that…” said Sniffy huffily.

“Sniffy,” said the duke ominously. “Are you going to tell me, or do I have to choke it out of you?”

“Well, may as well,” said Sniffy. “I was staying with old Boofie. You know Boofie. Splendid chap. We were in Poona together. I remember that joke we played on the adjutant’s wife. Did I ever tell you—”

“Tell me about Mrs. Plummett, you unmitigated ass!” roared the duke. Tortoiselike heads poked around the wings of armchairs, and several elderly voices called “Shush,” and then subsided with an angry rattling of ironed newspapers.

“For the love of God, Sniffy,” said the duke in a lower voice.

“Oh, well,” said Sniffy reluctantly. “Boofie and Boodles and myself were out riding on the Essex marshes, and we got lost. Miles from anywhere, it was. And we reined in beside this sort of rundown house, and all at once we heard her sing, you know, Poppy. Gave me a turn. Thought we was hearing a ghost. Boodles,
he
came right out and said it, plain as day. Said, ‘I say, you don’t think it’s her ghost, do you?’ But Boofie, he’s sharp, mind you. Good old Boofie. Don’t grind your teeth like that. I’m going to tell you. So Boofie, he says—he says, ‘Those phonograph things are absolutely marvelous.’”

With that, Sniffy went off into a great bellow of laughter.

“Shut up!” snapped the duke. “Where was this?”

“Somewhere in Essex—near Chelswater. Took us about a couple of miles straight across the fields from the house to reach it.”

“And didn’t you go to the house to ask?”

“What about?” said Sniffy stupidly. “You don’t ask about a phonograph!”

But the duke was off and running.

“Strange chap,” mused Sniffy. “Don’t think I want to see him again for a while.”

But Sniffy was to see the duke again all too soon. He was dragged, protesting, from his bed in the small hours of the morning and carted off to the milk train by the constabulary. The hunt for Poppy was on again. The duke had alerted Scotland Yard and had given them Sniffy’s address before traveling down to Essex himself.

By morning, Boofie Posthwaite-Hans-Bellamy’s estate was overrun with police, tracker dogs, reporters, and photographers, while Boofie racked his dim brain to remember in which direction he had ridden with his friends the day they had heard Poppy sing.

After a lot of discussion with Sniffy the fellows decided they had ridden off to the south, when in fact they had ridden to the north, and so it was that the police did not find the house until evening.

The duke fortunately understood German, and so Greta was able to sob out her tale. Which way had Mrs. Plummett gone? “East,” wailed Greta, who did not know at all but wanted to appear helpful, and so the hunt was off and running in the wrong direction again.

Apart from the constables left to guard Greta, only the duke remained behind. He could not believe that Poppy would have fled from the back of the house, as Greta had said she had done, for the back was fenced in by a high thorn hedge.

If I were Poppy, thought the duke, I would run straight across those fields in front of me, and I wouldn’t stop running until I got far enough away
.

He mounted on the raw-boned hunter he had borrowed from Boofie’s stables and set off from the house in a straight line across the marshes. The ground was fortunately hard enough because of the long spell of hot weather, and soon he saw the town stretched out before him as night fell over the marshes. He spurred his horse to a gallop as he heard the faraway whistle of an approaching train. For some reason he could not fathom, he knew Poppy was going to take that train, that she had not called at a house for help; that she had not even called at the police station.

Late walkers turned in amazement as he sped hell-for-leather through the streets. He tethered the horse in the station yard and rushed to the ticket office. How damnably slow was the elderly clerk! The duke gave him a pound and shouted at him to tell Mr. Posthwaite-Hans-Bellamy that his horse was in the station yard. The train was already steaming out of the station, and the ticket collector held up his hand to stop the duke.

“You’ll never make it,” he said. But the duke hurtled past him and, running alongside the train, seized the handle of a compartment door, wrenched it open, and nearly fell on the floor at the feet of an alarmed-looking spinster.

“Sir!” she cried, outraged, thumping a sign on the window with her umbrella. “This is a ‘Ladies Only’ compartment.”

The duke gave her a look of cold distaste, brushed off his jacket, pulled down his waistcoat, and marched out into the corridor.

He walked along the corridor from compartment to compartment, searching feverishly, gradually losing hope as one strange face after another looked out at him.

And then all at once she was there, and he took a deep breath. There was no one in the first-class compartment but Poppy, and she was sitting staring out into the rushing night.

She was hatless, and her skirt and blouse were sadly creased and crumpled.

He slid open the compartment door and went in. Still she did not look around.

“Hallo, Poppy,” he said, sitting down opposite her.

To his surprise, she turned paper-white and cringed back in her seat, her eyes flying up to the communication cord.

“It’s me, Hugo,” he said. “Poppy, the police and I have been searching all day. We were too late to save you. I gather you saved yourself.”

Poppy stared at him in a dazed manner. You and the police…” she said faintly. “But I thought you were responsible for me being taken away.”

“Good God,” said the duke in blank amazement. “Do you never listen to a word I say? I want to marry you. I love you. So why on earth would you think—”

“They let me see the newspaper with your engagement announcement,” said Poppy.