Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond (13 page)

The clouds crept down, ever closer to the narrow track as it wound upward over the deserted moor. Where was Bodmin Manor exactly, on this mournful emptiness that shared its name?

Along with this question, which grew more weighty as they crossed each uninhabited vale, another hung in the scales: would Sir Ambrose’s new bride, Lady Sarah, recognize Maddie as a threat the instant she arrived? Maddie had not yet determined how to act. The insult of the visiting card was a burning itch, demanding satisfaction. But to challenge one’s hostess was to destroy any hope of remaining incognito and retaining one’s job, not to mention that vital allowance. Would all the honour left in the world eventually give way to the need for money?

That last was one question too many for Maddie. She pulled the lap robe higher and simply endured until yellow gate-lanterns glimmered through the dusk on the far side of yet another green valley. When at last they stopped in the lee of the gray, stone house, it took all her will to shift her freezing feet. If the lady of the manor offered her a poisoned cup now, she would drink it and gladly, if only it was warm.

She was not put to that test, for Sir Ambrose, greeting them in the central hall, at once made his lady’s apologies. “She finds the air of Cornwall enervating, and keeps to her bed most days,” he said, his thin hands flapping helplessly. Duty done, he shot like a hunted fox into a doorway on the left, through which Maddie glimpsed a wall of bound books. The voices of at least one other man rumbled from within, asking about the new arrivals.

The footman picked up an oil lamp and led Hornblower up an old oak stair that creaked under every footfall. Maddie followed, more than once snatching back her hand from a clinging cobweb, and trying not to think what might be falling onto her hat from the ancient tapestries that dangled from unseen rafters. Her bedchamber was no more salubrious. A small fire sulked on the hearth, belching earthy smoke into the room. She felt the bedding and determined to demand a warming pan from the next maid or housekeeper to put in an appearance.

No-one appeared, however, and eventually she draped the bedding over the room’s two chairs to air and dry, as close to the fire as she dared leave it. Then she, with her black notebook, a hand-light, and TD in separate pockets, crept back down the stairs to explore the home of the legendary adventurer, Baron Bodmin.

The library, for such it obviously was, was deserted under a few hanging lamps. Darkened and crackled portraits hung from fraying wire over the mantle and between the windows. Along the shelves, in the intervals of bound volumes, were curios brought from distant corners of the world: sextants and globes, chunks of ore from which mineral flecks gleamed, bone fish-hooks and ivory netsuke, carnival masks, and innumerable devices of gears, gauges, and lenses whose purposes she could not divine. From the used glasses and overflowing ashtrays, as well as the warmth of its fire, the room was in general use by the men in residence. A likely spot to overhear something of interest, then; she looked about for places where TD might be concealed amongst the clutter.

A door near the hearth led to a gloomy parlour. Maddie switched on her hand light and, by its green glow, looked around. This room had a feminine décor, with cloisonné boxes (all empty), painted miniatures of children, and a workbasket containing more cobwebs than needlework. The small aluminum seam-crawlers in it were clearly of an earlier era, the thread spools on their backs too faded to determine their original colours. The room was dingier and much colder than the library. Clearly the new mistress of the house had not made it her own. And yet someone had been here recently, for there were signs of a heavy skirt trailing in the dust along the fireplace wall, and wider smudges near some of the furnishings. An archway led to the hall, shielded by a painted screen and velvet draperies too dirty to reveal their hue.

Shivering in the chill damp, Maddie hurried back to the library for a quick search through the large writing desk. One drawer yielded blank telegram forms identical to the one framed at Jamaica Inn. She stuffed several into her notebook for future use. The other drawers held various items of stationery equipment, but nothing of interest. Wherever Baron Bodmin had kept his secrets, it was not this desk. When the dinner gong went, she hurried across the hall and found the dining room already occupied.

By Colonel Muster, still wearing the suspiciously dark lenses she remembered from Egypt.

THE COLONEL WAS
not abroad “for his health,” as his family would doubtless prefer.

Not dead by his own hand, as the regiment he lately disgraced would prefer.

Not in London paying off his debts, as his landlady and others would prefer, although his natty attire implied he was not entirely without funds, or credit.

He was simply hiding out from irate creditors at his old friend’s isolated manor.

Had he been there the whole time since fleeing London?

He did not recognize her, for he merely stood up until she was seated and then dropped into his chair again without the slightest attempt at conversation.

Professor Plumb appeared soon after, unmistakable in his Oriental smoking gown and his fez from the Cairo medina. Behind him came Hercule Hornblower, holding forth on the subject nearest to his heart, namely his own comfort. Or the lack thereof, for there was much to complain of at Bodmin Manor. Once again, he fell asleep in mid-sentence. How had he ever made his name as a great detective, when he put his own comfort ahead of questioning and observing? Sir Ambrose joined them and apologized once more for his wife’s absence.

Relieved of her worry over confrontation with Sarah and the resulting exposure of her Egyptian persona, which would make her investigations here impossible to pursue, Maddie savoured the aromas of roasted beef and a claret sauce being brought in by a sturdy housekeeper and the footman from earlier. No ceremony was observed; dishes passed from hand to hand without conversation, and she fell to eating as rapidly as the men did, waiting for a chance to break the ice, or for Hornblower to seize the opportunity to grill the men closest to the deceased baron. He said nothing, but took seconds of everything, while she seethed with impatience. Would that she could question them herself! When they’d all slaked their first hunger, she would make the attempt.

She was thwarted. Hardly had she set down her utensils when the housekeeper, with a truncated curtsey, informed her coffee would be brought to her in the ladies’ parlour while the gentlemen were at their port. She rose, thinking there must be another parlour, but the woman led her across the hall to the dark, cold room and there left her, with a candelabra for company.

Slipping through the library door, she placed TD on a cluttered shelf and whispered, “Listen for me. At your discretion.”

As men’s voices sounded in the hall, she retreated to the parlour, drew the door mostly shut, and studied the swirls on the floor. It looked almost as if someone in a long skirt had knelt by that sofa and reached underneath, but for what purpose? Cleaning had definitely not been the objective. Nobody had cleaned here for many years.

When the housekeeper returned, she was seated in a hastily brushed chair by the empty grate, wondering if she wouldn’t be better off just going to bed. The woman set down her coffee and said, “Sorry, miss, that I didn’t get up to tend you when you arrived. There’s only me to do the supper, see, and the house hasn’t half gone to shambles since the old mistress passed away. Master didn’t care for women about the house, even to clean it.”

At last an opportunity for questions. Maddie seized it, but with little gain. The baron had not summoned his housekeeper on his return from foreign parts, although she was just a step away on her brother’s small farm, and she was as shocked as anyone when he washed up dead on a beach five miles away. She had not returned to Bodmin Manor until sent for by Sir Ambrose last week. As the gentlemen could now be heard in the library, she cast a nervous glance over her shoulder.

Despite the urgings of curiosity, Maddie dropped her inquisition rather than be overheard. With no chance of retrieving TD until the library emptied, she asked for a warming pan and went up to her bedchamber. There, she remade her bed and laid out her thickest nightgown. With a second candle ruthlessly filched from Hornblower’s room next door, she wrote for him a brief report, the gist of which was “nobody said anything during supper.” Then she set down her impressions of the manor in an atmospheric item for CJ. On the morrow, if she learned nothing of more substance to add, she would seek the boy who carried messages, and send him back to the inn with a telegraph form.

Maddie dozed in her bed for some time before she heard Hercule Hornblower stumbling and grumbling beyond the wall. She soon remembered TD hidden in the library and, pausing only to don her dressing gown and shoes, set off to fetch him. In the pale glow of her hand light, she crept along the upper hall and down the creaky stairs. The lower hall was filled with shadow. The ancient house creaked and whispered in the dark. Again she thought of large spiders spinning their dusty webs down to catch her hair, and shuddered.

The library door stood ajar. By the glow of a dying fire within, she avoided the furnishings and found the shelf where she had left the little bird. He came forward, cold to her touch, and wrapped his little bronze claws around her finger. She cradled him with a murmur and turned away, only to see a faint gleam under the closed parlour door. Somebody was in there.

Out to the hall she and TD went, and along to the dusty velvet curtain. Beyond it, a woman’s shadow bobbed in the light of a lone candle as she felt along a wall, the sleeve of her thick dressing gown brushing it clean panel after panel. She shifted a wing chair and knelt behind it, and when she came up again, Maddie saw her face.

Lady Sarah Peacock was not so much ill every day as tired out from searching all night.

Maddie held TD up to the edge of the painted screen, hoping his new optical settings could penetrate the dimness. At last something to report to Hercule Hornblower tomorrow, if he could stay awake long enough to listen.

IN THE MORNING
Maddie woke to a thundering on her bedchamber door. She stumbled toward it. Hornblower stood there, his moustaches quivering with impatience. The Coast Guard had sent a steamer to bring him to view the baron’s body, and he could not go without her to take notes. She scrambled into her clothes, grabbed her notebook, and sent TD to her hat. She had not stayed awake last night to listen to whatever conversation he had collected in the library, and could only hope that whatever she asked him to listen to today would not be erasing those older records with every new word.

Soon she and her empty stomach were jouncing along the rocky track in bright morning sunshine. A breeze sweet with meadow flowers kissed her face. Far away, sunlight danced on the sea. Above a rocky headland bobbed the orange tethered balloon of the Coast Guard Station. The building came into sight, and beyond it, winched right down to the wharf, was the sturdy expeditionary airship she had seen four busy months ago above a Cairo street: the
Jules Verne
.

Thrilled to meet the famous London detective, the Coast Guard officer ordered the
Jules’
gangplank run out and led them up it. The small airship wobbled a bit as they stepped aboard, but seemed still air-worthy despite its adventures. Gazing around avidly, Maddie wished Obie were here to give the working parts a once-over. Although not an airship engineer, he knew enough to tell if some vital cog had irretrievably broken.

The airship’s interior was one long cabin. A hammock dangled from the central beam, with two chests open below it. One showed a jumble of hard-worn clothing, the other a biscuit tin, a jar of preserved apricots, and a bent fork. Spartan rations indeed. Two chairs were set on squat posts bolted to the floor; they could be spun toward a small table or the windows or the instrument panel at the bow. On the table were a spirit stove and a single, used glass. Another glass had smashed on the floor nearby. Hornblower did not appear to notice it, but Maddie leaned far over and, under the pretense of holding her hat, touched TD to signal an image.

“This,” said the duty officer, “is what really got our attention.”

Maddie looked along his pointing arm. In the window directly above the instrumentation panel was a small, round hole. She walked forward, stopping with one foot in the air rather than step on an ominous dark stain in the worn floorboards.

“Is that—?” she asked.

“Dried blood. Yes, we think so. Have you seen enough here, Mr. Hornblower, sir? I sent for the coroner directly we got your message, and he will be waiting to explain the remains to you.” He led the way from the airship, with the great detective in ponderous thought behind him. Maddie bent over to capture the image of the stain, and then hurried after.

The coroner waited outside, his sparse, silvery hair blowing in the onshore breeze and his silvery-blue eyes magnified alarmingly by tarnished brass-rimmed goggles. He handed Hornblower down to solid ground and ignored Maddie as he burbled.

“Oh, sir, I can’t tell you how eager we are to have you working on our little mystery. This way, sir. My morgue, such as it is, is just below. We have kept the remains cool, and they don’t smell near as bad as they did when found. Watch your step coming down, sir. A bit slick from the tide yet.”