Farthing (32 page)

“What’s missing, Mrs. Simons?” Royston asked.

“Lady Eversley’s jewelery, and her Wedgewood bowl, and her brush and mirror. They must have taken them to sell!”

“Were they very valuable?” Royston asked, getting out his notebook.

“Oh yes, frightfully valuable. The bowl especially. But the jewel case too, more so than usual, because

Lady Eversley left the Ringhili diamond in it this time.”

“Good gracious, does Lady Eversley have the Ringhili diamond?” Carmichael asked, genuinely surprised.

“I remember reading about that as a boy.”

Royston looked blank. “What is it, sir?”

“It’s a diamond worth a province—there was an Indian prince, early in the last century, before the

Mutiny. The British were going to conquer his kingdom, but he persuaded Sir Charles Cavendish to accept his homage to the Crown instead, in return for this absolutely amazing diamond.”

Carmichael’s adolescent enthusiasm came back to him. He remembered finding the story in the school library, in a book glorifying the Empire Builders. The book had not altogether approved of Cavendish, but

Carmichael’s adolescent soul thrilled to the thought of the diamond, although a gift of money would have seemed shameful. “The diamond was very old even then, and there were stories that had already attached to it as it had passed from hand to hand.”

Mrs. Simons gave him a wintry smile, which reminded him of Lady Eversley. “Well, Sir Charles Cavendish had a daughter who married Lord Varney, and they had a daughter who married the Earl of

Hampshire, and their daughter was Lady Margaret, Eversley’s mother. She later became
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Duchess of

Dorset, of course, and gave the diamond to her daughter on her marriage. So you see how the diamond has come down from mother to daughter ever since 1835.”

“And now Mrs. Kahn has it,” Carmichael couldn’t resist adding. “What a romantic story.”

Mrs. Simons glared at him.

“What else was in the jewel case?” Royston asked. “Perhaps we should go inside and you should give me the whole list.”

“After that, check the Kahns’ bedroom for what’s missing there,” Carmichael said. “I’d better telephone the Yard.”

“I have spoken to Inspector Yately, and he’s on his way here,” Mrs. Simons said, frostily.

“Good,” Carmichael said, and walked away into the house.

No Hatchard was waiting in the hall today. Of course, he would be in London with the family.

He was a little surprised not to find Jeffrey there instead. Carmichael went into what he had been thinking of as

“his” study, which seemed very bare and empty now. He pulled the bell cord, and picked up the telephone to place a call to the Yard.

Lizzie arrived while he was still waiting for his call to come through.

“Where’s Jeffrey?” he asked.

“Searching the woods in case something’s happened to Miss Lucy and Mr. David,” she said. She was twisting her apron in her hands, but stopped when she saw Carmichael looking.

“When did you last see Mr. and Mrs. Kahn?” he asked.

“When I served their lunch,” Lizzie said. “It wasn’t a proper meal, just sandwiches and tea, and they ate it in the garden.”

“What time did you take it out?” he asked.

“Half-past twelve, on the dot, which I could tell because of that confounded clock.”

“Nobody’s likely to be confused about the time in this house, anyway,” Carmichael said.

Twelve-thirty was also the time he had telephoned. “Were they both there when you took the sandwiches out?”

“Yes, sir, both sitting peacefully reading,” Lizzie said, perhaps a trifle too glibly.

“And you didn’t see them again?”

“No, sir, when I went to bring the lunch things in again they’d gone, and I said to myself that I hoped they had a nice ride.”

“You knew they’d gone for a ride?” Carmichael asked.

“Oh yes, sir.”

“Had it been planned in advance, or was it a spur of the moment thing?” he asked.

“Oh, planned at breakfast time at least, if not last night,” Lizzie said, not quite looking him in the eye. “I

heard about it at breakfast as quite a settled thing, and I think they may have mentioned it to Mrs.

Smollett last night—they were chatting to Mrs. Smollett last night, sir, and when I said to her this morning that they were going to ride she said just yes, as if she knew already.”

Carmichael knew she was lying, but couldn’t understand why she thought it better to make him believe that the escape had been planned in advance. “So you weren’t surprised when you saw they’d gone from the garden?” he asked.

“Oh no. If I’d been surprised, if I thought they’d run away or anything, or seen anything suspicious, I’d have gone to tell Mrs. Simons that they were gone so she could tell the police,”

Lizzie said, and

Carmichael could only secretly applaud. So Mrs. Kahn’s friends among the servants had kept the escape quiet as long as they dared. What else might they have been lying about earlier?

“Well it doesn’t matter anyway, Lizzie,” he said.

The telephone rang as his London call came through, so he dismissed her and she scurried back to the kitchen, no doubt to tell Mrs. Smollett that she’d got away with lying to the Inspector.

There was nothing Carmichael could do to obstruct the hunt. It swung into action as inexorably as a thunderstorm. Before long, there were local policemen scouring the county, Metropolitan police at the

Kahns’ London residence, his parents’ house, and at Waterloo and the other mainline stations, ready to intercept passengers from trains. Yately was on his way to interview the stationmaster at Farthing

Junction. Carmichael had given them what time he could to take cover; he could do nothing more for them now.

He interviewed Harry at the stables, whose story agreed with Lizzie’s, that the ride had been organized well in advance and had not seemed at all unusual. He said they were dressed for riding, but was very vague as to what exactly they were wearing. Carmichael didn’t press him.

Mrs. Simons had given a very exact account of what Mrs. Kahn had been wearing in the morning, which he told Royston to pass on to the manhunt unchanged.

“She said she was wearing a pink skirt, and when I checked her things there was a pinkish skirt on the bedroom floor,” Royston objected.

“Never mind,” Carmichael said. “I think she had two.”

“I don’t think so,” Royston said. “I have Yately’s list from when he searched their things, and it only has one pink skirt on it. And there’s a pair of beige slacks missing.”

“Let it go through, sergeant,” Carmichael said. “Are there any jackets missing?”

“Not as far as I can tell,” Royston said. “Mrs. Kahn was wearing a cream silk blouse—that isn’t here, so she’s still wearing it. Some of her underwear is also missing, unless it’s being laundered.

Mr. Kahn doesn’t seem to have taken a jacket, though he has a light sweater.”

“They’ll be cold come evening,” Carmichael said. “And they’ll have trouble booking into a hotel without luggage.”

“Yes, sir,” Royston said. “Though if they’ve gone to London and they’ve got money they could buy a suitcase easily enough.”

“The Yard’s sending Jenkinson to speak to Lady Eversley to see if she knows of any friends who might shelter them,” Carmichael said. “You give Mrs. Simons’s description to Yately to give to the Winchester police. Say she might also have slacks if you like.”

“Yes, sir,” Royston said, his face unreadable. “Sir—how do you think they knew to run? We didn’t know we were coming down until just before we left, we were still on the trail of Lady Thirkie. Nobody knew last night, when they were making plans to go.”

Lizzie’s story had cleared him as well as herself, Carmichael realized, with a lifting of the spirits.

“Perhaps someone told Lord Eversley about the star last night or this morning, and he got in touch with them,” Carmichael said.

Royston went off to speak to Yately, shaking his head.

Yately came in before Carmichael had time to do anything. “I need to use the telephone for the description,” he said. Carmichael pushed the instrument towards him, and listened while he gave it. Mrs.

Kahn was described as wearing a pink skirt and cream blouse, or possibly slacks, carrying a large cream

purse, with a recent wound on her cheek. Mr. Kahn was apparently wearing a brown jacket, perhaps leather.

“They were definitely at the station,” Yately said when he’d finished. “We’ve found the horses in
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a field near there. He bought a ticket for London and she bought one for Winchester. The station-master knew her, but not him—Jewish-looking fellow in a brown jacket, he said. He didn’t see what train they went on; he wasn’t looking out at the platform.”

“Kahn didn’t have a brown jacket,” Carmichael said.

“He must have picked it up somewhere. Cunning they are, Jews, especially about clothes. Well, we’ll be able to have a crackdown on them now—some of the lads are quite cock-a-hoop about it.”

Carmichael didn’t ask where, in the verdant but essentially empty countryside between Clock Farthing and Farthing Junction, Kahn might have found a brown jacket growing on a bush.

“Where could they get to, in the Southampton direction?” he asked instead. “We’ve got plenty of men in London on the lookout already.”

“I’ve alerted the local forces across the whole West of England,” Yately said. “If they’d changed at

Southampton they could have gone anywhere, on the Salisbury line, or on to Portsmouth, even back to

Aylesbury and into London that way. You should have someone watching Paddington as well as Waterloo.”

“We have men at all the mainline London stations,” Carmichael assured him. “We’ve also sent out an alert to garages who hire cars to be aware of the possibility they might try to take one.

That’s nationwide.”

“The description will go out on the BBC tonight,” Yately said. “Wherever they’re hiding, they won’t be able to lie low for long, and then we’ll have them.”

“Sergeant Royston and I are going back to London tonight,” Carmichael said. “I don’t see that there’s much we can do from here that you can’t do yourself, though we’ll stay in close touch.”

“Yes, sir,” Yately said. “I’ll be sure to keep the Yard informed of anything that comes up here.”

The phone rang. “That’ll be my call to the Yard now. I’ll let them know how we’re getting on.

Then I’ll collect Royston and leave.”

Yately gave a wave that was half a salute, and left the office. Carmichael picked up the phone, and in moments he was connected with Sergeant Stebbings.

“Not much progress,” he said, and outlined what Yately had found at the railway station and all that had been done. “With Kahn, it’s just a case of waiting until they get unlucky or we get lucky, and we’ll pick him up. Tomorrow I want to go down to Campion and speak to Lady Thirkie.”

“The Chief wants this wrapped up quickly,” Stebbings reminded him. “Come into the Yard in the morning and we’ll see what needs doing. No use chasing hares into thickets when it’s obvious we’ve got our man.”

“There’s much more solid evidence against Lady Thirkie than against Kahn,” Carmichael protested.

“Ah, but he’s run, which is a sure sign he did it,” Stebbings said, comfortably. “I’ll see you in here in the morning then.”

29

Abby met us in Portsmouth station. She was wearing a coat, quite naturally, because it had started to rain as we’d been crawling around the south coast, and she had a carpetbag with her.

Apart from that she was just Abby, the same as always, with a little more gray in her hair. When she saw us she hugged me, and then David, which was wonderful of her because she’d only met him once before, when she’d come up to London for the day and we’d all had lunch. She hadn’t been at the wedding because Mummy had control of the guest list, and she naturally regarded Abby as no more than an ex-servant.

“There are police by the station entrance,” she whispered into my ear as she hugged me. “I don’t know if they’re looking for you. Come into the buffet and have a cup of tea. We can go out when
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the London train comes in, if they think you’re coming from Southampton.”

I think she said the same to David. He took her carpetbag, quite naturally, and we all went into the buffet.

It’s a poky little place, but they gave us stewed tea and that rather nasty fruitcake that the railways always seem to serve.

The buffet was L-shaped, and we went into the part of the L away from the counter.

Abby opened up her bag as we sat down, and took out of it an off-white raincoat and a black macintosh.

“I hope this coat fits you,” she said, giving it to me. “The mac will have to be for you, David, because I

didn’t have anything else that might be a man’s to hand, and I didn’t want to take anything Mr.

Talbot would miss.”

“You’re amazing,” I said.

“I hope very much that I’m overreacting,” she said. “We shouldn’t talk about it here, in case. Put your purse inside my carpetbag. I think the best thing is if you carry it, David, as if you’ve just arrived from

London and Lucy and I have come to meet you.”

David took off the jacket and we put that into the carpetbag too. Then he pulled the mac on and looked quite different, much less respectable, as if he might be some kind of insurance agent or a man who kept a bicycle shop. The white coat was too big for me, but I belted it tightly.

“You shouldn’t have put yourself into trouble for us,” David said.

“I thought they might know your clothes, and they might be looking for a man and a woman together or separately, but not for an older woman as well,” Abby said.

“If they ask, I’ll be your daughter and David my husband,” I said.

The London train came in then, wheezing its way onto the platform like an old man with asthma.

None of us had touched a drop of the tea or a bite of the wretched fruitcake. We all stood and went out onto the platform, waited until the doors opened and people were rushing out, and rushed out with them. We were soon out onto The Hard, the Portsmouth seafront by the docks, where Nelson’s