Escapade (41 page)

“Excuse me, Phil,” said the Great Man. “But do you think it is absolutely necessary that Lord Purleigh tell Inspector Marsh about the late Earl? Immediately, at any rate? Perhaps he should wait until—”

“After tea time? Too late, Harry. Marsh already knows,” I turned to Lord Bob. “He’s talked to Miss Turner. She figured everything out. She went exploring in your father’s room last night. She found the phony beard and the wig.”

“Ah,” he said, and he sighed once more. “She did strike me as an intelligent woman, Miss Turner.”

“I’ll talk to them,” I said. “The police. See if I can get them to keep things quiet.”

Lord Bob smiled sadly. “Thank you, Beaumont. I appreciate the thought. Well.” He raised his head. “We’ll see what happens, won’t we?”

“Things’ll work out,” I told him.

“Yes. Yes, of course.” He looked around the room and blinked, like someone who’d just awakened from a daydream. He turned back to me. “I wonder. Do you know where my wife is? I really ought to let her know what’s happened.”

“She’s in the drawing room,” I said.

“Thank you.” He stood up. He still look rumpled but now he looked worn and defeated and about ten years older. We stood up and he stepped forward, holding out his hand. “Houdini. Beaumont. Thank you for listening.”

“TELL ME, PHIL,” said the Great Man as we walked across the patio outside the conservatory. “You say that Inspector Marsh has talked with Miss Turner.”

“Yeah.”

“She told him—”

A voice interrupted him. “ ’Scuse me, gents.”

It was a policeman, stepping away from the trunk of the tree. I’d forgotten that Superintendent Honniwell had assigned two cops to guard Maplewhite. This one was tall and bulky in his dark uniform. and he needed a shave.

“Sorry, gents,” he said, “but I’m s’pose to watch all the comin’s and goin’s hereabouts. And who—”

“I am Harry Houdini,” announced the Great Man. “And this is Phil Beaumont, a Pinkerton man. And, as you see, we are going. You have no orders that prevent anyone from going, do you?”

“No sir,” said the policeman, backing away toward the tree. “Sorry, sir. Just doing me job, sir.”

“Thank you,” said the Great Man. “Idiot,” he said, when we’d walked another ten or twelve yards, out onto the sunny lawn. “Like he said, Harry. He’s just doing his job.”

“He does not even have a gun, Phil.”

“English cops don’t carry them.”

He looked at me. “But how do they shoot people?”

“They don’t.”

His forehead furrowed. “They never carry guns? None of them? Not even detective officers, like Marsh and Sergeant Meadows?” “Marsh could probably get issued a weapon. If he were going up against a band of anarchists. Bombmakers, maybe. But generally, no.”

“Amazing.” He cocked his head and stared down at the passing ground. “Amazing.”

“You wanted to know something about Miss Turner?”

He turned to me. “Yes. Miss Turner told Marsh about the knife in her bed this morning?”

“I told him.”

“And what was his response?”

“He didn’t give one, Harry. Not to me.”

“Do you believe that he thinks it significant?”

“I don’t know what he thinks.”

He nodded. “To whom has he spoken?

I told him about my morning with Marsh as we walked down the slope of bright green grass and then along the gravel walkway. It was another beautiful day, the second in a row. The squirrels couldn’t get over it. They ran up and down the trees like this would be their last chance.

“The Darleen woman,” said the Great Man. “The kitchen maid. She had been visiting with the Earl on a regular basis?”

“Yeah.”

“But why, then, would the Earl feel obliged to accost these other women, including Miss Turner?

“I don’t know. Maybe the visits from Darleen were what started him wandering the halls again. Maybe Darleen wasn’t enough for him.”

He made a face. He didn’t like that idea. “And why would he steal trinkets from everyone’s room?”

“No idea. He was crazy, Harry. Maybe we should ask Dr. Auerbach.”

He shook his head, looked off, looked back at me. “And to whom else did you speak?”

I told him.

When I finished, we were at the rear of Maplewhite, the huge gray house rising above the faraway trees. And what did you find out, Harry?” I asked him.

“Well, Phil,” he said. “I believe I have solved the mystery.”

“Which one?”

“All of them. Ah, here is the path Miss Turner mentioned. Come along, Phil.”

There was a narrow opening in the wall of trees and brambles. The Great Man plunged into it. I followed him.

“So what’s the solution?” I asked his back.

“All in good time, Phil,” he said over his shoulder.

It wasn’t much of a path. As it twisted down into the forest, branches grew across it, and vines and spiderwebs. After a while it came to a wide passageway that looked like it had been a roadway once. This led left and right, off through the towering trees. The Great Man turned left.

I caught up with him. “Where are we going, Harry?”

“I told you, Phil. The old mill. I suspect that there is another path that leads there, closer to the house, but this is the path Miss Turner took.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. On horseback.”

“When she saw the snake?”

The Great Man smiled. “She saw much more than a snake, Phil. She saw the murderers of the Earl.”

I looked at him. “What are you talking about, Harry?”

“All in good time.”

I remembered the Colt in my pocket and I thought about using it. I decided not to. We marched along the old road for two or three hundred yards.

“Ah,” he said. “The mill.”

It was an old mill, made of stone but in ruins now. Its big wooden wheel had tumbled into the narrow rusty-looking stream. The stream flowed from a pool surrounded by drooping cattails. The water was dark and still and the branches of a big willow tree were reflected as they dipped down into it.

“And there is the willow,” said the Great Man. He turned to me. “Shall we take a look inside the mill?”

“It’s your party, Harry,”

He padded through the grasses and jumped over the stream. I followed. The wooden door to the mill was hanging inward on its hinges. We stepped inside. The place smelled of mold and burnt wood.

“Someone has built a fire,” said the Great Man.

The building was cylindrical, about fifteen feet across. Against the far wall, on the uneven stone floor, was a huddle of ash and charred lumber, bits of planking, chunks of two-by-four and four-by-four.

“Hobos,” I said.

“Are there hobos in England?” He crossed the floor and stood over the small pile.

“Two million unemployed, Lord Bob said. Probably a few of them on the road.”

“Lord Purleigh,” he corrected me. He looked up. “Do you notice anything interesting about the floor, Phil?”

“No one’s swept it for a while.” Dust and ashes were scattered over the slabs of stone.

He nodded. “Come.”

Outside, he stared across the pond to the willow tree. “They were standing there,” he said. “Under the willow.”

“Who was?”

“The ghosts that Miss Turner saw.”

“Harry.”

He turned to me. “You must help me find it,” he said.

“Find what?”

“The tunnel.”

"WHAT TUNNEL?”

“The tunnel that runs from here to the manor. It
must
exist.” He looked around, narrowed his eyes. “You saw how the pathway curved back to the south? I estimate that we are perhaps sixty yards from the house itself. The west side of it.” He nodded toward another wall of trees and brambles. “Beyond the forest there.”

“Why a tunnel, Harry?”

He looked at me. “But Phil. How else could the ghosts get from here to the house without being seen?”

I remembered the gun again. “Harry—”

“Please, Phil. We do not have much time. We must find it. It cannot be far.”

It wasn’t. It was built into the side of a hill about twenty yards from the mill, hidden behind the overhanging leafy branches of a big oak. At its entrance was a pair of broad wooden doors, like the doors to the freight tunnel beneath the formal garden. Lying beside the doors, in the weeds, was a small wicker picnic basket.

“Harry?” I called out.

He was maybe forty feet away, thrashing through some bushes. He stopped and came running toward me. There were scratches on his cheeks that looked like African tribal marks.

“Aha!” he cried. He reached for the door. “You see, Phil!”

It swung open before he could reach it. He danced back.

“Miss Turner!” he said.

She stood there in the opening, a lantern in her hand. Her cheek was smudged and strands of pale brown hair were trailing across her face. She was smiling anyway.

“I heard you coming, Mr. Houdini! Look! I found it! She said this as if she were talking about El Dorado.

“But Miss Turner—”

“Wait a minute,” I said. I turned to her. “Miss Turner, you told me you wouldn’t wander off on your own. We agreed. Last night, in Mrs. Corneille’s room.”

“I know, I know,” she said in a rush. “But everyone else had gone to church and I was sitting out on the patio, where it was perfectly safe—there was a policeman on patrol every ten minutes, nearly—and then Mr. Houdini appeared and spoke with me, and I understood what he was thinking from the questions he asked, what he must be thinking, about the ghosts—”

“Okay,” I said. “Hold on. What’s the story on these ghosts?”

“. . . AND SO YOU see, Phil,” the Great Man said, “logically, this was the only possibility. The tunnel. It was the only way the two of them could have gotten into the house so quickly. And without being seen.”

I said, “Seen again, you mean.”

“Correct. Miss Turner had already seen them. Unfortunately for her. But, in any event, I determined to locate it. And I
would
have,” he said. He looked at Miss Turner. “I suppose,” he said stiffly, “that I should offer you my congratulations, Miss Turner.”

“But Mr. Houdini,” she said. “I should never have considered the possibility of a tunnel if you hadn’t spoken with me. It was you, after all, who first realized the significance of the ghosts. Once I understood what you suspected, I realized how important they must be. And how they
must
have returned to the house. I brought a lantern from the stables and I concealed it in the basket and I came out here. I found the tunnel, yes, but all the credit, really, is yours.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “Well. Yes. You are correct, of course. And where does the tunnel lead?”

“It ends at a sort of pantry next to the kitchen,” she said. “They must have used it to transport milled grain, years ago. There’s an entrance to the kitchen from the pantry. And there’s another tunnel there, one that goes off at right angles to this one. I didn’t explore it.”

“The freight tunnel,” I said. “Under the garden.”

The Great Man nodded. “It is as I suspected.” He turned to me, smiling. “The entire house, Phil, all of Maplewhite, is one enormous gimmicked prop.”

“Okay, Harry.” I said. “You’ve figured things out. But you’re going to have a hard time proving it.”

He raised himself up to his full height. “I have a plan,” he announced.

“Uh-huh.”

“And Phil,” he announced, “there is one additional matter I have discovered.”

“What’s that?”

He told me. Miss Turner made a small gasp.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know that.”

“But . . .
how
?” he said. I had never seen him look surprised before. “How could you know?”

I told him.

“But what shall we do, Phil?” he asked when I finished.

I smiled. “I have a plan.”

“May I help?” asked Miss Turner I looked at her. “Maybe you can.”

THE GREAT MAN and Miss Turner took the path back to the house. Using Miss Turner’s lantern, I took the tunnel.

It led straight into Maplewhite, into the pantry Miss Turner had found, and from end to end it was only about sixty yards long. The floor of the thing was covered with the same gravel that covered the walkway around the grounds. The walls were made of dark stone, damp and slimy.

So were the walls of the other tunnel, leading out under the formal garden. I took a look down that, then came back and left the lantern in the pantry before I slipped into the kitchen. It was empty. The trip from the kitchen to the Great Hall took less than a minute. Lord Bob wasn’t there. I found him and Lady Purleigh in the library, sitting together on one of the sofas. Both of them were looking a bit depressed, maybe even a bit lost. I asked Lord

Bob if the Great Man and I could use his telephone. I told him we’d pay for the calls.

“Money,” he said sadly, “is the least of my worries just now.” Lady Purleigh smiled bravely and took his hand.

“Everything will work out,” I told them, but I knew that it wasn’t exactly the truth.

The Great Man and I were busy in Lord Bob’s office for an hour or so, on the telephone. Miss Turner helped out for a while. She did a good job, and we had some luck we didn’t deserve. By one o’clock, Miss Turner and I had done everything we could. She left and the Great Man stayed there, waiting for some calls. I went to find Higgens, the butler, and I asked him to ask Inspector Marsh to come to my room as soon as he got back from Purleigh. Then I went upstairs and lay down. There was nothing useful I could do at that point, and I was tired. It had been already been a long day, and it wasn’t over yet. There was still the tea party.

I WAS ASLEEP when someone knocked at the door. My watch was on the night table. Two-thirty. I sat up, swung my feet off the bed, and said, “Come in.”

It was Marsh, smiling happily. “Ah, Beaumont. Knitting up the raveled sleeve of care, were we?”

“Yeah. Grab a seat. How was Purleigh?”

“Lovely.” He pulled the chair out from under the desk, twirled it around, sat down on it. “A typical Devon hamlet, white walls and thatched roofs and cheerful inbred villagers. Very picturesque. I quite enjoyed myself.”

“Good. You find out anything?”

“I did, yes.” He smiled. “Would you care to hear?”

“I’m all ears.”