Think of England (17 page)

No. Curtis didn’t want to leave Daniel, not at all. He wanted to be the one standing guard. But if he didn’t return, with Holt gone and Daniel missing from the cave, there would surely be a general alarm raised. And Miss Merton was competent and, so far as one could on such a short acquaintance, he trusted her.

“The Armstrongs are dangerous,” Curtis warned her. “James especially, but they will all be desperate if they find out what we know, it’s death to them. I don’t imagine they’ll hesitate to kill.”

“Nor will I.” Miss Merton sounded quite matter-of-fact. “I lost two brothers in the war. I feel quite strongly about treachery and selling secrets to our enemies. And I don’t appreciate this blackmail business at all, and nor will Fen. Now, you wait here for me. I’ll say I saw you out for a morning stroll and you’ll doubtless be back for breakfast.”

She left, striding out at a brisk pace. Curtis barred the door behind her and returned to Daniel’s side.

He looked flushed, unkempt, and vulnerable, too, with his mouth open and no trace of the armour of mockery and affectation. Undefended, that was how he looked, and Curtis felt his fists tighten at the thought. If James Armstrong came by, he was looking forward to having it out with him.

The knock on the door, an hour or so later, was Miss Merton, in walking gear, with a very nice Holland and Holland shotgun under her arm and a knapsack, which she hefted. “Food and drink, and a revolver that I’ll leave him. I’ll see him right. Off you go, now. I’ve spoken to Fen.”

“Be careful, won’t you? And look after him. Thank you, Miss Merton.”

“I’ll look after him if you look after Fen,” she said dryly. “And I think, under the circumstances, you may call me Pat.”

Chapter Eleven

He was soon on “Fen” and “Archie” terms with Miss Carruth too. It felt comforting to have an ally at breakfast, as he explained how much better his knee was and she chattered artlessly about Pat’s decision to go walking all day. Somehow, without the slightest impropriety, she managed to convey that now her companion’s strict eye was lifted, she intended to have a little fun, and she accordingly attached herself to Curtis.

James Armstrong didn’t seem to care. He was frowning at the table, noticeably depleted with the absence of Daniel, Holt and Pat Merton, and not long after they had finished the meal, when Fen was proposing a lazy stroll around the gardens, he came up to Curtis.

“I say, have you seen Holt?”

“I haven’t, no. He’s sleeping jolly late.” Curtis let himself sound a touch disapproving.

“He’s not in his room.”

“Oh. Then he must have gone out early.”

“Everyone seems to have done today,” Fen put in. “Pat went off on one of her marches, and weren’t you up early, Archie?”

“About six, I suppose. I can’t say I saw Holt, though.”

“Six!” Fen gave a tiny scream. “I need my beauty sleep.”

“Then you must sleep a great deal,” said Curtis, aware his role was to flirt a little, and also that he was really not very good at it.

Armstrong didn’t come in to improve on that lumpen compliment. He seemed not to notice that Curtis had attracted the woman he’d been so doggedly pursuing. “I hope he shows up,” he said, scowling. “You didn’t hear anything last night?”

“Last night? When?”

“Any time.”

Curtis shook his head. “I went to bed early, perhaps ten. Slept like a log, I’m afraid. You don’t think Holt went out in the night? Why on earth would he do that?”

Armstrong was looking decidedly uncomfortable, and now Curtis was sure that he had known what Holt was up to. He had put Daniel in the cave, he’d known Holt was going back there in the night, for whatever hellish reason.

“I don’t know,” Armstrong said. “Maybe he heard a noise, or, or—”

“A burglar?” Fen gasped with horror. “You don’t think he confronted a
burglar
?”

“Of course I don’t, you st—you, you see.” Armstrong’s recovery was stumbling at best. Fen looked at him, pretty features setting into an expression of cold politeness, leaving him in no doubt she knew what he had almost said.

“I’m delighted to hear it, Mr. Armstrong. Come, Archie, escort me, please.”

Curtis offered her his arm, and she swept out into the hall with an air of offended dignity that would have suited a dowager duchess. Armstrong didn’t try to follow.

Once in the gardens, sure of privacy, Fen looked up at him, a laugh in her velvet-brown eyes. “Well! He wasn’t very gracious, was he?”

“He’s worried. Don’t take this lightly, Miss—that is, Fen. I don’t know how much Pat explained?”

“Everything I need to know, which is probably everything.” Fen spoke with sublime confidence. “So Mr. Holt won’t be coming back?”

“Ah— No. No, he won’t.”

“Good.” He looked down at her, shocked. She made a face. “I thought he was quite nasty. He laughed at everyone, underneath. He was so polite to Sir Hubert, but one could see he was sneering really.”

“Would you say so? I didn’t notice.”

“I did. I don’t much like people who laugh up their sleeves.”

“Da Silva’s a little that way,” Curtis observed ruefully.

“Do you think so?” Fen considered it. “I don’t quite agree. That is, Mr. da Silva laughs at everyone, but he hopes someone else will get the joke too, don’t you think?”

Curtis thought about that for a few moments, then said, “Yes. You’re rather sharp.”

Fen dimpled. “But Mr. Holt isn’t like that. One was not supposed to get the joke, and if one did, it wasn’t funny and it only made one feel worse.”

“Was he offensive to you?”

“Oh, well.” Fen paced forward, hands behind her back. “It’s not that I mind flirting, you know. Mr. da Silva is the most dreadful flirt, and it’s wonderfully amusing and desperately unserious. But Mr. Holt flirted rather horribly. Not in public, that was unremarkable, but alone. He
looked
at one so. One felt as though he knew things he shouldn’t.” She paused. “And I suppose he did, of course, with their spying. How utterly vile.”

Curtis quelled his curiosity as to what Holt could have known about Fen. It was none of his business.

“Well, we’ve a chance to put an end to it,” he observed. “We can have people up here to catch the brutes red-handed, if I can just make a telephone call without the operator eavesdropping.”

“Yes, of course.” Fen twinkled up at him. “I think I might be able to help you there.”

They weren’t able to act straightaway. First Lady Armstrong came out to meet them, giving them a roguish look and declaring that she had come to replace Miss Merton as chaperone. Fen went into peals of apparently unforced laughter at the weak witticism. Curtis, watching Lady Armstrong, saw strain in her eyes.

They were taken off to join the party. Most hostesses offered a relentless programme of entertainments for a country-house party; Lady Armstrong’s popularity—and, in fact, the success of the blackmail venture—sprang from her willingness to allow guests to disappear off in twos during the day, as well as the general practice of arranging rooms to facilitate encounters at night.

Nevertheless, there was a certain level of appearance that had to be upheld. The guests of the reduced party, minus James, were gathered to try their hands at archery, since Sir Hubert had installed a range, and this was a sport enjoyed by both sexes. Curtis took part gamely. The bow would have been almost impossible for him to handle even if he’d been paying attention, which he was not, but at least he needed no excuse for his off-target shots.

After a couple of hours that might, under other circumstances, have flown by, they were led in for lunch. Curtis cursed Lady Armstrong’s incessant fussing: when would the blasted woman let them alone? He was horribly aware of Daniel undefended, perhaps ill, perhaps worsening; Pat Merton, waiting alone—armed, but what if James Armstrong tracked her down? Would she have the nerve to shoot? And the clock was ticking. There would be very little chance of help arriving today, now, and the later he called, the longer it would take.

Curtis had been trapped by Boer forces in a South African
kraal
, lost behind enemy lines for two days without water, and treed by an enraged hippopotamus, which had been a great deal less amusing than it sounded. He didn’t remember any of those times with fondness, but this house party was beginning to wear his nerves thinner than all of them.

“Do try the spiced beef, Mr. Curtis,” Lady Armstrong said. “Cook makes it to a South African recipe, I believe.”

“What do they eat in South Africa?” Mrs. Lambdon asked. “Zebras and things, I suppose?”

Curtis was dealing with that when the door opened and a rather hot-looking James Armstrong entered.

“You’re late, boy,” said Sir Hubert, with a frown.

“I’m sorry, pater, everyone. I went for a walk, lost track of time.”

Curtis doubted that. He suspected James would have been up to the caves where he would have found—well, with luck, nothing. He would be wondering where Daniel was, where Holt was. He would, Curtis assumed, be aware that a bicycle was missing and thus that Holt had never come back from his trip.

Was he looking for Daniel? Did he have men out? In South Africa there were trackers, Bushmen who could follow spoor across miles of apparently featureless ground. The wizened, scrub-haired man that they had called King George would have been able to follow Curtis’s tracks from the caves to the folly at a running pace, and would have known he was carrying another man too. Curtis hoped to hell that Peakholme’s beaters didn’t have those skills.

James settled at the table after another word of rebuke from his father. He looked distracted and concerned.

“I say,” he remarked abruptly to Curtis. “I thought you were heading down south again, what?”

Curtis gave him a genial smile. “My rotten knee’s rather better today, thank heavens. I mustn’t be tempted by the long walks, but it’s very well up to a stroll. That said—may I use your telephone to call my specialist?” he asked Lady Armstrong, seizing the opportunity. “Just to be sure.”

“Of course. Whenever you like. The operator will be there till seven—you know we have our own operator for the system here?”

“I’d love to see how it works,” Fen put in. “Daddy’s firm built the system, you know, Archie. He’d be so disappointed if I didn’t examine it. May I go and see your exchange? I don’t understand a
thing
about wires, but I can tell him how wonderfully clever it looks.”

“Of course, my dear.” Lady Armstrong laughed at her, just a little, and the men all joined in. Fen smiled sweetly back.

They went down to the exchange after the interminable luncheon. Fen said, as they tramped the gravel paths, “I suppose you know lots of terribly rude words? From the army?”

“Er, some.” Curtis was rather taken aback.

“Do feel free, then. In confidence, Pat uses some dreadful language—she grew up with four brothers, you know—and after a meal with those people, I’m rather missing her turn of phrase. I could
slap
Lady Armstrong, honestly.” Fen looked ruffled and indignant. “For all they know Mr. da Silva is lying dead in a pit somewhere, and there she sits stuffing her face with cold chicken and rissoles. What a foul set they are.”

“I couldn’t agree more. What’s your scheme for the exchange?”

“It depends on the operator. Follow my lead.”

The telephone exchange was housed in an unobtrusive hut next to the generator, painted a dark green so as not to stand out from the woods that would one day surround it. A fast, narrow stream ran by the hut a little below them, turning a mill that provided part of the house’s electric power.

Fen knocked on the door and smiled blindingly at the small, balding man who answered.

“Good afternoon, I’m Carruth. Fenella Carruth. My father, Peter Carruth, built the system for Sir Hubert.”

The operator’s face didn’t change. He was apparently not a fanatic of the telephone. “Oh, aye, miss?”

“I’ve permission to see the exchange, you know. Sir Hubert
so
kindly said I could tell Daddy all about it.” She tripped in, and Curtis followed, looking around with incomprehension at the board of wires and sockets. “Tell me, did he use the Repton transformers here?”

“Couldn’t say, miss.”

Fen nodded. “Well, Archie, do let me show you. To connect the call, you see, one has to connect a telephone to the switchboard. These are the front keys, here, for the house telephones. One places it in the jack, and then the back key connects to the other telephone. Now, do remind me.” She radiated charm at the operator. “Which position connects the operator to the cord, and which is the ring generator?”

Curtis suspected that was the simplest question imaginable; it was certainly within the operator’s power to answer. He beamed, and set forth the principle in exhaustive detail, prompted by Fen’s artless questions, until just a few moments later she was seated at the desk, gurgling with laughter.

“So one simply connects this front key here, to this back key here, and then—now, Mr. Curtis, do give me the number of your medical specialist, and I shall be your operator!”

Curtis recited the number of his uncle’s office. Fen, giggling at herself, put the call through, and said musically, “Calling for Mr. Archibald Curtis!” as soon as the call was answered, then leapt up, hand to mouth, as she handed the receiver over. “Oh but how rude, we can’t eavesdrop on your medical matters.” She clasped the operator’s arm. “So
you
shall show me the generator, and we’ll leave Mr. Curtis to his call.”