But if I were a prisoner, my window had no bars, and I was determined by some means I would get out it and meet the two a.m. stage to Southampton. I went to my room early after dinner, for the watching eyes of my two guardians were wearing my nerves thin. I lay on my bed, and thought in a disjointed and far-ranging manner of my predicament. At eleven, the Peterses retired. By twelve, there wasn’t a sound in the dark house. At the window, the moon shone mistily through a veil of clouds. I thanked God it was not pitch black, was not too cold, was not snowing, as it had been that other night I had to walk alone along dark roads, to a destination equally uncertain to my present one. At one, by the clock on the dresser, I put on my cloak and began working on the window. It was difficult to raise, but after a few tugs that hurt my shoulder joints it slid up and I felt the cool touch of the night air on my face. Peering into the front yard, I saw it to be free of Mr. Peters. I would not have been much surprised to see him there, still hammering on that box.
I clambered out the window, hung by my finger tips with my legs dangling down the wall of the house till they nearly touched the verandah roof, which slanted down to within jumping distance of the ground. I feared I had lost my footing on the roof and was about to tumble head over heels, causing a great racket, as well as giving me a sprained something or other. But my footing was regained fairly quietly. I shimmied my way to the edge of the roof, crouched to jump. It seemed suddenly a higher leap than I had planned on. I sat on the edge, steeled myself for it, and plunged. Nothing hurt. I was off and running, down the drive, out onto the road. No sooner had I taken four paces in the direction of the stage stop than I heard feet pounding after me.
Mr. Peters, standing on guard to stop me?
Was
I a prisoner then? In any case, I was a fleeing prisoner, and I ran as I had never run in my life before. There was nothing that could properly be called a thought in my head, just a great black ball of fear, panic, and determination to outrun whoever was coming after me, faster, faster, till I could hear him gasp for breath. The absurd, nightmarish notion cropped into my head that it was my past pursuing me. Or was it my foe from the chapel grounds? The road surface was perfectly treacherous. Wet with slush crusted to ice in little peaks formed by wheels of carriages passing earlier, every inch holding a trap in the blind darkness. At least the disadvantage worked both ways. I heard my pursuer slip, curse, and regain his footing, and again he was coming after me, gaining inch by inch as my legs fought against clumsy long skirts. Another dark form darted out of the bushes by the roadside in front of me. It was Mr. Peters.
“Get her! Stop her!” the man behind me shouted in an angry voice. “Don’t let the bitch get away.” The sound of that voice brought me to a dead halt. It was impossible, but it was Sir Ludwig Kessler.
Chapter Fourteen
Once I came to a stop, it was no time till I was apprehended, of course. I stood there in the cold roadway, trying to see the face of this man I had trusted, had thought a friend, more than a friend. Vision was imperfect, but clear enough to show me a glowering white mask. “Congratulations, Mrs. Knightsbridge, on an excellent performance,” he said, then grabbed my arm rudely, while Mr. Peters wordlessly took my other, and in this manner I was dragged back to Bay House. They moved so quickly speech was impossible. I couldn’t think of a word to say, in any case.
“Lock her in her room,” Ludwig said in that hard voice I hardly recognized. “I’ll bring the police in the morning.” As an afterthought he added, “And Peters, nail some boards over the window. Do it now, at once.”
“Why am I being locked up?” I demanded.
“Better get used to it, Mrs. Knightsbridge,” Sir Ludwig replied in a sneering voice. “With luck, you’ll only get ten years in Bridewell and escape the gibbet.” Then he stalked from the room. I’m sure I don’t know where he could be going, in the middle of the night, but he went outside.
Peters, perhaps not relishing the job of climbing on a roof and indulging in carpentry in the middle of the night, locked me in the attic instead. He threw a blanket at me before closing the door, as though I were a dog. I half expected it to be followed by a bone. It is difficult to say what my sensations were during the next hours. They were too confused. I had been brought here not for safety then, but to be locked up, a prisoner as I half thought all along. Sir Ludwig
knew
I was Mrs. Knightsbridge, must have known all along, and apparently knew a great deal more as well. Knew I was ripe for prison, so must know I was behind Miss Grafton’s kidnapping. But why had I been treated so royally at Granhurst? Had he been working with Morley and the police all the while? Yes, I had been kept under pretty close surveillance there as well, when I considered it. If he knew me for a criminal, why had he let me stay on, with his cousin and vulnerable sister? The house had seemed familiar to me from the very beginning. I began to wonder if I had been going there when I got off the coach. This line was futile, however. I could make nothing of it. Nor could I make any sense of the way in which I had been treated—like a member of the family, and not the least-loved, either.
I was not so foolish as to try to sleep. I wrapped the blanket over my shoulders. Between it and my warm cloak I was not quite freezing, though my fingers and toes would have welcomed a fire, and my eyes would have appreciated some light. It was very dark in the attic in the dead of night, with only a faint glow from the clouded moon penetrating dusty, small windows. The windows were investigated for possibility of escape, but in vain. High up, with no access to the ground except by flight. At length I stopped pacing and sat on a hard trunk, bundled into my blanket. At least I knew who I was. I was Mrs. J. F. Knightsbridge, from Edinburgh. A wealthy lady who dabbled in the arts for a pastime. I wondered how hard the law would be on such a lady. Someone said the law was a cobweb that caught midges and let through hornets. I hoped Mrs. J. F. Knightsbridge was wealthy enough to be considered a hornet. Wondered too exactly what crime I would be standing trial for, now that I was caught. Not just the kidnapping—there was extortion as well to go along with it. Surely to God I had not ordered Lorraine Grafton murdered! No—no, this I could not believe of myself.
I didn’t sleep a wink the rest of the night. I saw the sun rise over the naked trees, a golden rose dawn it was, with purple shadows. I thought it would make a lovely painting, except that the true drama of nature was too contrived to look well in a picture. No one would believe it. No one would even tackle it, except possibly Fuseli. At seven, Mr. Peters came and led me downstairs to my room, which had been decorated with the wooden bars over my window. I shuddered inwardly. ‘Better get used to it, Mrs. Knightsbridge.’ I soon got used to it. By the time breakfast came, I was quite accustomed to peering between the slats, down the road, for signs of—what? Police I suppose, coming to take me to a different prison. I was not at all repentant, but only angry that I had been caught, and that I could not even remember what it was I had done.
It was infamous, unjust, and not to be borne. I considered my plight in what I thought was a logical manner, and came to the conclusion it could not well be worse than it was. I was to stand trial with no means of defending myself. Whatever motives had caused me to break the law, I could not put them forward. I observed that Mr. Peters lurked around the front of the house, not always in my sight, but often enough so that I knew he skulked there, to be sure I didn’t pry off my bars and leap again. As no sign or sound of Kessler had been observed since my return, I assumed that when he left the front door the night before he had left the area. It was only the Peterses guarding me. I was not likely to be so little guarded again. When luncheon came—at least they weren’t starving me—it would be brought by my jailers. I would hope for Mrs. Peters, tap her on the head, lock her in with her own key, and leave.
I sat patiently waiting for lunch. At noon on the dot I heard her ascend the stairs on her soft feet, set down the tray outside the door, move the key in the lock and peek her head in. She looked frightfully embarrassed, the one look I got at her before lowering a flower pot on her head, from my hiding place behind the door. A geranium it was, that had been turning yellow on the window ledge. She fell forward, not unconscious, but dazed enough for me to dart out and turn the key that was still in the lock. I was all ready, cloak on, plans made. Off down the stairs, out the back door to evade Mr. Peters watching my window from the front. It was miraculously simple, except that once out I had nowhere to go.
The afternoon coach was not due till three, and long before that they would be out looking for me. As soon as Mrs. Peters got the window raised and hollered to her husband. They would know where to look, too, thanks to my questions. I took off like the wind, running in a southerly direction, though I didn’t know it. Bay House was halfway down the western slit of that little inlet of the ocean that sticks like a knife into the belly of the south coast, with the Isle of Wight guarding the open end. I kept peering over my shoulder, wondering that I was not followed. I later learned that Mrs. Peters, a confirmed ninnyhammer, didn’t have the sense to raise the window and shout. She spent fifteen minutes picking the door lock open with a hairpin, only because her husband was not at that moment visible from the window. I believe he took his job of jailer rather negligently, sitting on the verandah half the time to escape the wind.
After running for about half a mile, gaining sharp stabbing pains in my chest and gasping for breath, I saw a small village rising before me in the distance. Not more than a dozen buildings, it offered poor concealment, but there was a largish boat just preparing to put off from the shore. I asked at once where it was heading, hoping for France and safety. The sailor told me to Hythe, a mile down the coast, thence to the Isle of Wight, to deliver nails and paint for the shipbuilding industry. Excellent! Who would be looking for me on the Isle of Wight? The police, as soon as they discovered my trick, but an island of over a hundred square miles with several thousands of population seemed at that hectic moment a safer refuge than the public roads. I begged to be allowed to go, claiming urgent business on Wight. I didn’t quibble over the fee, though it was of course somewhat higher than the customary one. The man was ready to leave on the instant, and I didn’t intend for the ship to get away without me. I regretted the stop at Hythe, but it was extremely brief indeed, only to drop off a few packages and pick up a passenger. A nondescript person, a businessman.
The gentleman introduced himself as soon as the ropes were cast off, and it was soon evident he meant to make a pest of himself. He was that obtrusive sort who insists on telling a stranger all his business, and clearly expects to hear one’s own in return. I soon learned Mr. Colroy had three drapery shops on the island, and was on his way back from a buying spree in London, where the woolens, he told me, had reached a shocking price. He blushed to ask the sum from his customers. Then his light blue eyes examined me with interest, waiting to hear my story. I became Miss Jones (rather tired of being Miss Smith), on my way to visit an aunt, also Miss Jones, at Cowes, as that was the port to which we were headed.
“I have a shop there,” Mr. Colroy told me at once. “The Colroy Drapery Shop, on the main street. I believe I know your aunt.”
“Oh!” I said in dismay, till I realized that outside of a Miss Smith, there was no inhabitant for any village more likely than a Miss Jones.
I was soon claiming kin to a host of Joneses, stretched from Cowes to Ventnor on the island’s south coast. Mr. Colroy and I were old friends by the time the ship docked. As I had no real friend in the place, I began wondering if I might not put Mr. Colroy to use. I began dropping hints that my aunt did not actually expect me, and I was the most shatterbrained thing in nature not to have waited a reply to my letter before coming. I meant to surprise her for her birthday, I told him, smiling stupidly.
“You can always take the next boat back to the mainland if she’s not there,” he consoled me.
“Yes,” I was forced to agree aloud, but my mind was busy circumventing this sane and logical course. What I had decided to do was to find myself employment with Mr. Colroy at one or the other of his three shops, or his own house. Just what the eventual outcome of this was to be was unclear, but it would give me time and a little money. I could, in the breathing space, write to Mr. Soames from there and if I were not being sought by police, he would send money or even come and get me.
Just before we parted at the dock, I wangled a half-hearted invitation from Mr. Colroy. “Well, if your aunt isn’t home, you can be in touch with me at the inn, the Wight Arms, where I mean to eat before going on to Newport. That is where I live, outside of Newport. I can lend you a little something if you are short,” he offered. I had intimated a shortage of cash to get back to the mainland. He looked so respectable that it was impossible to suspect any ulterior motive in his offer. Indeed I had to all but burst into tears before he extended it.
I walked along the main street till I got to the Colroy Drapery Shop. It
did
exist, which lent my Mr. Colroy a very respectable coloring, for it was quite a fine shop. I let another quarter hour slip by, time to visit Auntie Jones and learn she was gone to the mainland to visit relatives, before going to the Wight Arms and asking for Mr. Colroy. He was in the dining room, lucky man. I was led to him and at once outlined my predicament. “Oh dear,” he said, shaking his head at such unwonted goings-on. “Well, I shall be happy to lend you a little something. I must get on to Newport at once myself, or I would see you safely onto the boat.” He was already reaching for his wallet.
Newport, right in the middle of the island I had learned, a good central location from which to run his three shops, sounded infinitely more safe and concealing than Cowes. I was always a bit of a fast talker, and with the urgency of getting away with him, leaving at once, I had soon invented an aunt, another Miss Jones, in Newport. She too must be away when I arrived, but by then I hoped to have him well around my finger, and get a temporary post with him while awaiting my aunt’s return. He appeared to be the most gullible of God’s creations. He swallowed this string of lies without a flicker of his blue eyes, and offered me a seat in his carriage. I rather hoped he would offer a bite of lunch as well, but he didn’t. He went on eating stolidly before my hungry eyes, chicken in a brown sauce, mashed potatoes, green peas. Lovely breads. He did not take dessert, but had a cup of coffee.