This promised to be rather embarrassing. If some prestigious neighbor of Kessler’s was carrying on with a housemaid, I was not particularly eager to be aware of it. I stood undecided a moment, really considering how to get away without being seen. The best way was to just return to the house as though I had heard or seen nothing, and I turned around to do so. Moving at an awkward gait because of the pattens—the old-fashioned kind with metal rings—I was slow to escape. I had not quite reached the front of the chapel when I was felled by a blow from behind. Not a hard enough blow to knock me unconscious, but enough to stun me. My pursuer had moved quickly and silently to overtake me. I fell forward, but broke the fall with my hands. By the time I reached my feet again, hollering at the top of my lungs, my assailant was gone—run back behind the church and off into the spinney beyond. Much as I would have liked to see who he was, I had not the intention of going after him. I ran back to the house as fast as I could, to find my call had been unheard. Bess was busy in the Saloon polishing the cabinet we had had brought down.
She was humming happily to herself, and looking remarkably pretty in her mobcap, with her big blue eyes twinkling merrily, and her cheeks rosy. The homey aroma of turpentine and beeswax—not one too commonly smelled at Granhurst I confess sadly—was so mundane and reassuring that I knew Bess was innocent of any part in the affair. “Oh, you took a tumble, Miss Rose!” she said, looking at my bedraggled cape. “Let me take that to the kitchen to clean up for you.” I put off my bonnet and cape, and decided to say nothing of my adventure, at least to the servants.
“How fine the cabinet looks,” I complimented her. You can get a deal more work out of servants, and more happily, too, with praise than scolding.
“Sure and it’s a grand improvement over that great heavy dark box that’s stood here in times gone by. A shame it is the way we’re sinking into commonness here at Granhurst. What we need is a mistress, a
proper
mistress I’m meaning.” She smiled pertly at me as she made this remark.
She was usually a well-behaved girl, but I took the idea this speech was a slur on my own lack of propriety. Her meaningful little look suggested it was myself she saw as the mistress, and it seemed amazingly impertinent for her to suggest I was improper. “Miss Annie is getting that old and odd in her notions,” she rattled on, making her meaning clearer. I blushed under her knowing look, and hardly knew whether I felt more angry or foolish. To set her in her place, I suggested that as she had her rags and materials at hand, a touch of polish to the other pieces in the room would not go amiss. She took this hint well, considering it came from a governess.
Before leaving, I decided to pose one last question to her. “Are any of the girls in this house seeing a beau, Bess, a gentleman?”
“You’re wide awake on all suits, Miss Rose. They’ve never said a word to a soul, but if Millie, the upstairs maid, hasn’t had an offer from the head groom! They’ll be making the announcement at Christmas if Sir Ludwig permits it.”
“How nice for them,” I said, “but I meant a
gentleman.”
“What, a real
gentry
gentleman you mean? Lord, no, Miss. There’s no carry-on of that sort with us girls. Sir Ludwig takes a dim view of philandering. He’s not a hard master, but about that he is strict. Why were you asking, if I may be so bold, Miss?”
“I thought I saw a gentleman skulking about the grounds just now.”
“Isn’t that an odd thing, then? I thought the same myself as I was coming down the stairway half an hour ago. I took the idea I saw a horse cutting through the park, but as no one came to the door, I collect it was only a dog or a branch moving. Should I send some boys out to have a look, then?”
“No, he would be gone by now.”
To minimize talk and my own investigation of the church from which I had been hinted away, I said nothing to Annie either when she came down from her rest. I wore a slight bump on the back of my head. Not so large as my former egg, but no doubt Annie would have liked to see it. Unfortunately, she was mistaken in thinking a second blow would bring my memory, which she would go on calling my mind, back in a rush. I remembered nothing I had forgotten before.
Chapter Eight
I sat in
all innocence helping Annie hem up the remains of my green silk to wear as a shawl when Sir Ludwig and Abbie returned from Gillingham. “Well, and did you have a nice trip?” Annie asked.
The smile, denoting that they had, faded from Sir Ludwig’s face as he spotted the satinwood cabinet sitting where it shouldn’t. “What’s that thing doing down here? Where’s the mahogany cabinet?” he asked, darting an accusing eye to me. I sat with my lips closed and let Annie do the explaining.
“It’s stuck off in the study. I had this one carted down as it was always a great favorite of Ruth’s. I don’t see why you must go sticking it off in the attics and fill the house up with lumber.”
“I want this taken out,” he said, but was diverted from more attack by an eagerness to get on with an account of his visit. He waited only to order tea before doing so. Despite the German name, the family consumed the customary English gallon of tea apiece each day. He took up a seat beside me and opened his budget.
“We can dismiss the notion that you are Miss Smith,” was his opening remark. I hardly knew whether this were good or bad. “Her description does not sound like you in the least. We had one from Mrs. Lantry, the housekeeper. Miss Smith was an older woman—at least thirty from the way she was described, and she had a mole on her left cheek.”
“It might have been a patch made to resemble a mole, for purposes of disguise,” I mentioned.
“No, no, we have completely abandoned the idea you are Miss Smith. There were other things—wrinkles, crowsfeet, a crooked tooth.”
“Good God, she sounds more like fifty than thirty. How did Mr. Morley come to describe her as a youngish woman of elegance?”
“I fancy it was the clothing led him astray. Miss Smith is not described as ugly, however. The mole was not disfiguring. We had to pose several questions before it came up at all, and the teeth were not markedly crooked. Under repeated questioning, Mrs. Lantry mentioned that one jutted a little forward, and the wrinkles and crowsfeet were spoken of as beginning. There were enough little differences that we are convinced she is not you.”
“What of her character reference? Was it a French address?”
“No, the last employer was from Scotland, actually. A Mrs. Knightsbridge at Edinburgh. We saw her letter.”
The image of those Scottish highlands and sheep loomed in my mind. Scotland sounded significant. I frowned over the name Knightsbridge. It rang some little bell. I disliked the name intuitively. “What did the letter say?”
“It said, apparently, just what Miss Smith had already said. She was hired as companion to Mrs. Knightsbridge. The lady is director of some small museum in Edinburgh, the Knightsbridge Museum, founded by her husband. A hobby for the wife, I suppose. The two women were active in tending to the place. Mrs. Lantry says this Miss Smith was very knowledgeable about art.”
“We knew art had something to do with it. It always keeps cropping up.”
“It has cropped up higher than that. Gwynne was with me, as you know. He busied himself looking around while I quizzed the woman, and he claims two valuable paintings are missing from the Grafton collection. A portrait of a woman by Titian, and some religious painting by Hans Memling—I forget the name of it. The latter he might conceivably have traded as he was getting into the Italian school in a big way, but not the Titian.
And,”
he raised a finger to stop me from speaking, as he had more news to impart, “more interesting still, our mysterious Miss Smith claimed one of the works hanging there was a forgery. Now, the way that came up is as follows. Gwynne had been there before of course and particularly admired a small work attributed to Giorgione. Not positively identified—the fellow hasn’t got more than a handful actually verified as his work, but this one was a likely applicant. He asked to see it, and found it had been hung in a little saloon, out of the main collection. After a single glance at it, he asked Mrs. Lantry if the original had been sold and a copy made. It had not, or not with the family’s knowledge, at least. When Morley finally arrived—he was out when we got there—he said no, the painting had been sent to London for some expert to examine, but it was declared not to be a Giorgione, thus its exclusion from the collection. Gwynne is ready to swear the picture presently there is not the one he saw a year ago.”
“Did Morley take it to London himself for examination?”
“No, Uxbridge took it. It was away three weeks—plenty of time for a copy to have been made, and even ‘aged’ with a coat of dark varnish or some such thing. Uxbridge also arranged for the sale of the two paintings—the Titian and Hans Memling. Told Morley they were not up to the standards of the rest of the collection. The price got for them was mentioned, and Gwynne says it is a ridiculously small figure. Now it seems to me that if Miss Smith was going to point out to Morley he was being duped when he got back from his visit, it is Miss Smith and not Miss Grafton who was the one Uxbridge actually wanted to be rid of.”
“You have decided Uxbridge is the villain, have you?”
“Oh yes, sight unseen. He must be. He has been cheating the Grafton estate. Gwynne says there is not a doubt of it, and he has warned Morley to beware of any further dealings with the fellow. Uxbridge lives at Shaftesbury. We went along to his place to pump him, but he is away on business. In London for an unspecified period of time, we were told.”
“I wonder if it was wise to warn him you are on to him.”
“I wonder too, but I was overwhelmingly eager to get a look at him, and he would have learned from Morley soon enough that he was under suspicion. Morley is in the boughs over the affair, and has run off this very day to a magistrate to press charges. He fears—you know what a worrier he is—that
he
will end up in the dock himself for negligence in the matter. It came out after a good deal of frowning and nail-biting that this is not the first intimation he has had that Uxbridge is suspicious. There were enquiries from the chap who purchased the two paintings that were sold. Rather pressing enquiries I take it from Morley’s state, but Uxbridge talked his concern away. Said it was standard procedure, to make enquiries, I mean.”
I listened to all of this, then asked, “Has Morley received any demand for payment in the kidnapping of his niece? Whoever abducted her has had ample time to get her and himself safely hidden.”
“No, he hasn’t. It begins to look as though he’s mistaken about kidnapping being the motive.”
“Yes, silencing Miss Smith is more like it.”
“I shouldn’t forget Miss Grafton is a great heiress,” Abbie joined in. “The house was
luxurious.
She must be rich as Croesus, and someone must inherit all that if she is dead. I wonder who would be the heir.”
“Morley,” Sir Ludwig answered. “Must be. He is her closest relative by a long shot.”
“Oh dear, I am convinced
he
would not want the worry of it,” I said.
“If you could have seen him, close to tears, you would know he is innocent,” Ludwig assured me. “He couldn’t be that good an actor.”
“So it seems Miss Smith’s arrival at the Grafton home worried someone enough he had to be rid of her. Uxbridge is the one who was tampering with the collection, so it must be Uxbridge we are looking for. A close neighbor, he might have engineered it easily enough, but what has he done with the two women? Three weeks tomorrow since they have been missing. It begins to look . . .”
“Yes, it looks as though they are long buried,” Sir Ludwig said bluntly. “And if that is the case, Uxbridge has probably got himself clean out of the country.”
“In which case we will
never
discover what happened to Miss Grafton and Miss Smith!” I frowned over this, then began to wonder how
I
fit into this puzzle. I seemed to be an extra piece. The plot was complete without me. I soon realized Sir Ludwig was scanning the same riddle.
“There was no mention of any
other
young lady in the case,” he said, regarding me closely. Then he hunched his shoulders and said with enthusiasm, “So, let’s hear
your
news.” He looked at me expectantly.
My eyes flew guiltily to the satinwood cabinet, but I soon realized it was more important news he waited to hear. His eager, expectant face said so. Impossible he had learned of my attack at the chapel!
“Who was the man enquiring after you at the rectory?” he went on, to make his point clear.
I looked at him stupidly. “What do you mean? I heard nothing of that.”
“Why, Mulliner told us when we went to pick up your gown that a gentleman had been asking after you this morning. I made sure he had been here long since. A middle-aged fellow he said, a gentleman, came to the door claiming he had heard your story as far away as Bath, and had come to enquire after you. His daughter, it seems, had taken off towards the end of November. The family suspected a runaway match with a captain, but as nothing was ever heard from the couple, he began to wonder if you might be she. The name, incidentally, was Miss Smith,” he added ironically.
“Another Banbury tale, then! No man came here.”
“Now that is very odd, for Mulliner told him your description, and he said it sounded like his daughter, and he was coming here immediately to see you.”
“He didn’t come,” I said. Then I gave a sudden lurch of intuition. Oh but he had come—had hit me instead of talking to me. Ludwig’s eyes were examining me closely, missing nothing of my reasoning.
The tea was upon us. I decided first I would wait and tell Sir Ludwig my tale in private, but as privacy seemed hours away, I could contain it no longer. I told the story, and he jumped to his feet, upsetting the tea over his knees and the carpet.
“I told you to behave!” he shouted, as though I were seven years old.
“I
did
behave! All I did was to go out for a walk in the park, and I ran away as soon as I knew someone was there.”