Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 (23 page)

Poppy watched in silent fascination, her hand still covering George's muzzle, while the intruder systematically rifled first the desk and then the cabinets and shelves behind him. Soon the desk was piled high with papers and files, while the man continued his search, moving more quickly as he failed to find that for which he was so obviously looking. Poppy thought she knew where it might be, in the safe hidden by the small oil painting directly behind the desk where she had often seen Basil stowing documents as she was entering the room. He had never seemed to mind, or if he did he certainly never showed it, simply locking the safe and nonchalantly closing the picture over it with a bored expression, as if to say that whatever Poppy saw him do mattered less to him than if she had been a servant.

But now the intruder had found the whereabouts of the safe and was directing the light from his torch on to it to examine the locking mechanism. Poppy at last came to her senses,
standing up suddenly and realising that however much she had hated Basil she couldn't possibly just go on watching someone burgle her late husband's house without raising some sort of alarm. After all, he might well be armed and dangerous, and once he was unable to break open the safe, which Poppy felt he was bound to do, as well as failing to find anything of value in the desk or cabinets he might move into other rooms, or go in search of someone in the house who just might know where any items of value were – say Poppy herself. After all, women married to aristocrats who lived in large mansions usually had jewellery of value.

Determined now to hurry as silently as she could to the servants' quarters in order to raise Craddock and a couple of the younger male members of staff, Poppy took one last look through the crack in the door to check on the position of the intruder, at which point the man turned away from the wall safe, allowing the light from his torch momentarily to light his features. Seeing who it was, Poppy immediately slipped into the study, closing the door tightly behind her.

‘Don't say a word!' She removed her hand from poor George's muzzle and put a finger to her lips.

The man looked at her, not betraying any of the surprise Poppy felt he surely must be feeling. Then he flashed his torch to check her identity before he spoke, and kept the beam shining in her eyes.

‘Go back to your room,' a familiar voice advised. ‘You haven't seen me.'

‘I think I have the right to ask what you are doing here, Mr Ward,' Poppy replied, her voice
low, but unable to keep a measure of indignation from it. ‘Or would you rather I simply went and called for help?'

‘I know it must look a trifle strange, but believe me it is not,' Jack replied, still holding the torch trained on Poppy. ‘Now please go back to your room and forget you ever saw me.'

‘And if I refuse?'

‘If you refuse it's going to complicate matters.'

‘All I have to do is walk out of this door and raise the alarm.'

‘And all I have to do is take this gun out of my pocket and tell you that you will do no such thing.'

Poppy now found herself looking at the business end of a small revolver Jack Ward had produced from his coat pocket.

‘I assure you I will shoot if I have to, Lady Tetherington,' he continued coldly. ‘I won't necessarily kill you, but I will shoot all the same.'

‘Who are you anyway?' Poppy said, putting her hand up to shield her eyes from the glare of the torch. ‘And what the heck do you mean by threatening me? In my own house?'

‘Just go back to bed, Lady Tetherington,' Jack Ward repeated. ‘You and your little dog.'

‘Not until you tell me what you are doing here.'

‘What does it look like?'

‘You're not a burglar. At least not the kind of ordinary burglar I would expect to find stealing.'

‘Go back to bed.'

‘What are you looking for?'

‘Go back to your bed,' Jack Ward repeated slowly, as if to a child. ‘Please.'

‘I might be able to help you find what you are looking for.'

‘I doubt that very much.'

‘You know I overheard what was going on that night,' Poppy persisted. ‘The night you came to my rescue. I know my husband was up to some sort of no good. And I suspect that actually you and he are not – or were not in his case – on the same side.'

There was a short silence, then Jack Ward lowered both his torch and his revolver, replacing the latter in his coat pocket.

‘Your husband—' he began.

‘My late husband,' Poppy corrected him.

‘Your late husband had a pocket book. Leather-covered. An antique-looking thing, bound in dark red hide. I need it, urgently, for my work.'

‘I saw it once or twice, yes. I know the book you mean.'

‘Do you know where he kept it?'

‘I saw him putting it in the safe on at least one occasion, so I imagine your suspicion is probably right – and that's where it is now.'

‘But you wouldn't know the combination of this safe.'

‘You're absolutely right, Mr Ward. I don't have any idea.'

‘Mmm.'

Jack Ward breathed in deeply.

‘I have to have this book, Lady Tetherington. So if you have any bright ideas …'

‘Wouldn't he – I mean if this journal is important to him, wouldn't he have taken it with him?'

‘My thoughts entirely. But apparently this was
not the case. No – ' He held up one hand. ‘ – don't ask me how I know, because I can't tell you. All I can say is that we know the journal is still somewhere in this house.'

‘We?'

‘Just stick to me knowing.'

Poppy nodded but accompanied the gesture with a shrug, to indicate that she did not think all that much of what he had said.

‘How many numbers is the combination?' Poppy wondered. ‘Do you know? I mean can you tell?'

‘Four. You know how many permutations that is?'

‘I can hazard a guess. But my husband's – my husband was a bit sort of self-obsessed. So I imagine he would choose a number that related to him, rather than just any old random numbers. His middle name was Narcissus.'

‘I'm open to suggestions.'

‘Birthdays. Age. Lucky number? And if you're asking—'

‘Which I am.'

‘He was born on the seventeenth of April, he is – was thirty-five, and his lucky number was thirteen.'

‘Worth a try. But don't bet on it.'

Jack Ward scribbled the permutations of those three numbers down on a sheet of paper, rose, pushed his glasses on to the top of his head, and shone the torch on the dial of the safe.

‘I think this might help,' Poppy said, switching on the desk light. ‘After all, I know you're here now.'

Jack Ward looked at her dolefully, raised one eyebrow in doubt, and clicked off the light.

‘Never use permanent light. Always use a torch. Switches off quicker, see?'

He turned back to his work.

The first attempt to open the safe using seventeen and thirty-five failed, as did the second using seventeen and thirteen. Without holding out much hope Jack Ward dialled thirteen and thirty-five.

‘No?' Poppy wondered.

‘Unsurprisingly – no,' Jack Ward agreed.

‘Try thirty-five thirteen.'

‘I might as well start nought-nought-nought-nought and work my way up through the subsequent six million permutations.'

‘Just as you might as well give it a try,' Poppy suggested, sounding impatient even to herself.

Jack Ward's expressionless face looked round at her again before he turned back to follow her recommendation. To his well-disguised amazement the tumblers clicked and fell and the safe door swung open.

‘Just guesswork?' he asked, standing back and preparing to delve inside. ‘Or inside information?'

Poppy shrugged.

‘Knowing one's enemy, I suppose,' she replied. ‘Not that I knew him that well. But the combination had to be something to do with himself, because that was Basil.'

Jack Ward withdrew a slender journal bound in dark antique leather.

‘This is obviously pretty important,' Poppy remarked, wandering over to the desk. ‘This book must be important for you to go to all this trouble.'

At once Jack Ward shut the book up the way one schoolboy might hide his work from another.

‘That important, is it?'

‘I wouldn't know,' was all Jack Ward would tell her. ‘It's in code apparently.'

The next thing Poppy knew Jack Ward had a tight hold on her arm and a finger to his lips. He said nothing, his eyes behind his spectacles narrowing at her to warn her of danger, before edging her round the room towards the window. Poppy frowned back at him, as if to ask what was going on, only for Jack Ward to grimace at the door while giving a curt nod to indicate they might have company.

They were by the heavy curtains that hung in front of the study windows opening on the outside wall of the house. Pulling the drapes quickly aside, Poppy saw the windows were open, and guessed that not only must this have been the way her uninvited visitor entered, but it was also going to be his exit route – and, obviously, hers. Judging from the way she was being urged towards the open window, Poppy was fairly certain he was not going to be leaving alone. He shone his torch outside, and suddenly Poppy could see the point of his earlier remark. You certainly couldn't shine a lamp so easily.

‘There's a bit of a drop.'

‘Why don't you go first and catch me?'

‘Hang on from the edge and drop,' Jack Ward instructed her, keeping his whispered tone reassuring.

Jack Ward's manner was enough for Poppy. She felt neither afraid nor daring, and promptly
handed him her little dog and clambered nimbly up on to the stone ledge in her thinly slippered feet before turning herself round, gripping the bottom of the lintel, holding on tight and allowing herself to drop the eight or so feet into the flowerbed below. Unhurt, but now considerably muddier, she stood up, reaching skywards for George. Jack Ward promptly dropped the uncomplaining dachshund into Poppy's outstretched hands. When she had him safely under her arm, Poppy scrambled clear, suspecting rightly that Jack Ward would follow at once, which he did.

‘Come on,' he whispered, grabbing her hand. ‘Round the corner and out of sight, and hang on tight.'

They had barely made the corner of the building when Poppy heard voices behind them. Glancing back as Jack Ward towed her round to safety she saw two heads peering out of the study window, although she was unable to identify either. Then suddenly she saw a familiar face turn in their direction, and a hand being held up, but before she could observe anything more Jack Ward had hauled her out of sight.

‘Now what?' Poppy gasped, as they stopped both to draw breath and become orientated. ‘What are we supposed to do
now
?'

‘Get out of here as fast as we can. Come on.'

He took hold of her arm, only for Poppy to resist.

‘Mr Ward, in case you may not have noticed, I am in my
night
things.'

‘I know, but I'm afraid that can't be helped. We'll find you a change soon enough, once we're out of this rather tight spot.'

He had a firm hold on her arm by now, half pushing half hurrying her away from the house, not towards the drive or the stable yard, but across the lawns and towards the woods beyond the lake.

Poppy ran along beside him imagining that he was panicking for nothing, until coming towards her, indistinctly, but nevertheless real, she heard the sound of urgent voices, and saw what looked like Leon and Craddock running around the front of the house waving torches, shouting and pointing in various directions. But Jack Ward had stolen a march on them, and not only that, he was headed in the direction it seemed no one was looking, and towards what, Poppy now prayed devoutly, their pursuers would consider to be the one place from which there was no immediate escape from Mellerfont, the densely planted woodland to the north of the lake.

When they were well inside the small forest, Jack Ward slowed to a stop and let go of Poppy's arm. Poppy, almost completely out of breath by now, her barely protected feet sore from the run across first gravel, then a cinder path and finally the rough ground lying on the verge of the woods, and poor George tucked firmly under her free arm, put the other arm out to steady herself against the rough bark of an old fir tree, and stood trying to catch her breath.

‘I don't believe this is happening. I know I'm going to wake up in a moment and find I was in bed asleep all the time.'

‘We can't stop, I'm afraid,' Jack told her in a low voice, coming to her side. ‘They're no slouches,
that lot down there. And they'll be sure to have the dogs out and after us before you can say knife. So we have to get round through the woods and up on to the lane above. It's only about a quarter of a mile. Think you can make it, Lady Tetherington?'

Poppy nodded. ‘Except I do happen to be freezing. If it's of any interest.'

‘I'm sorry,' Jack Ward said, taking off both his overcoat and his jacket at once. ‘I should have thought.' He looked momentarily embarrassed. ‘There wasn't exactly a lot of time for chivalry back there. Come on – we'd better get moving.'

This time they ran side by side without Jack Ward's having to drag her along. Now they were running over ground that contained sharp flints as well as fir cones and smaller pebbles; in fact the going was so bad at one point that Poppy fell, grazing both her knees. Jack Ward helped her up at once, but Poppy just shook her head, picked up George who had slipped from her arms, and ran on, if anything even faster, and without complaint.

Less than a couple of minutes later they found themselves on the lane as hoped, and thanks to Ward's excellent sense of direction less than fifty yards from a small car parked on the verge.

Jack Ward shut Poppy in the passenger seat, grabbed a travel rug off the back seat, opened the driver's door, threw Poppy the rug then jumped in himself.