Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond (16 page)

A log popped in the hearth, startling her. She looked around. Lady Sarah stood by the parlour door, beautiful in her pallor, staring at the wreckage of the paneling above the hearth. Mrs. Midas-White sat by the fire, gazing narrow-eyed at the two professors in turn, clicking her brass claws together. Sir Ambrose poured out another brandy and guzzled it. Hornblower preened his moustaches by the hall door. Colonel Muster was doubtless searching the trunk for the Eye of Africa. He was the baron’s executor, after all, and who had a better right to secure it? Except it wasn’t in the trunk, as Maddie well knew. And the Coast Guard was satisfied that nobody had interfered with the contents when the trunk and body were found. If it had not gone overboard with the baron from his airship, the mask must still be in the manor. Perhaps in this very room.

She looked at Lady Sarah again. All that time spent canoodling with Baron Bodmin in Cairo; had he whispered of hiding places in his distant home, for which she was searching? Tonight TD would be charged to follow that industrious trickster around. If she found anything, Maddie wanted to know about it.

A shrill ululation split the air. Sir Ambrose dropped his glass. Lady Sarah gasped. Professor Plumb floundered upright and slid to the carpet instead. Professor Jones yawned, snorted, and turned his face to the back of the sofa. Mrs. Midas-White blew again on a silver whistle, her waxen cheeks reddening with the effort. Soon several pairs of feet came tramping down the stairs and across the hall. An officer from her airship led a contingent of crewmen into the library. The lady pointed at Jones.

“Take that man to my brig. I will speak to him in the morning, when he is sober.”

“You can’t do that,” said Sir Ambrose. “The bounder shot up my granny. Call for the constabulary.”

“He knows something about the mask. I intend to have it.” Mrs. Midas-White’s eyes opened full upon him, gray rimmed in black. “Unless you can pay me its value tonight.” Not waiting for her hapless host’s response, she told her officer, “A small White Sky trunk was taken upstairs by Colonel Muster. Find him and take the trunk to my ship.”

She left the library, her spike heels rapping on the stones of the hall floor and her claws rasping on the banister as she took to the stairs. Her men slung Professor Jones bodily from the sofa and followed in a neat phalanx with him swinging insensate between them.

Hornblower shuddered. “These so-horrible people. Hercule Hornblower must bring an end before someone else is imperiled. Record all you know,” he told Maddie. “Or have guessed, or suspect, about the baron’s involvement with all these
crétins
.” He advanced on the brandy decanter, poured the dregs into his glass, and added, “Bring it to me here. Tonight. And send the footman with another bottle,
pour aider
the grey cells.”

Leaving Lady Sarah to minister to Professor Plumb, who had regained his chair amid piteous groaning, Maddie went upstairs. Professor Jones’ pistol bumped against her thigh with every step. What had possessed her to take it, and keep it? Surely it would be better turned over to someone accustomed to firearms? In her chamber, she removed the weapon from her pocket and contemplated it. Then something tapped on her window.

She dropped the gun. Fortunately, it landed on the coverlet. Obie jumped into the room and snatched it as it slid toward the edge of the lumpy bed. He popped the cylinder out sideways and tilted it over his hand. A half-dozen empty cartridges tumbled out.

“That’s better. You knew nothing of shooting when we last met. Where’d you pick up this pistol?”

“I still know nothing,” Maddie snapped. “It’s Professor Jones’. I took it after he tried to shoot Professor Plumb.”

“You took it?” Obie shook his head. “Wish I’d seen that. You need a minder, girl.”

“I do not! I managed quite well on my own.” Her temper easing, Maddie added, “Although I would have been in difficulties if Colonel Muster had not stopped Jones coming after me.”

“I dare not imagine. He’ll be in Mrs. Midas-White’s brig tonight, so you’ll be safe enough. Remind me to teach you to shoot, though, next time we have a few days together.”

“She really has a brig on a little ship like that?”

“On every ship. A law unto herself, that woman. Will she get the mask, do you think, from grilling Windy Jones?”

“Windy?”

“Short for Windsor. Or something else, if you believe Hiram about the stench in his cabin after a night of hard drinking.” Obie flopped onto the bed. “Some exciting night, huh? So fill me in.”

“I can’t. I really must write up a report for Mr. Hornblower. He said to include everything I know, guess, or suspect. He’ll take all the glory if my information leads to him solving the baron’s murder.” Maddie stamped her foot. “It always happens that way. I do the work and some man takes the credit.”

“If you take it yourself, someone will put your picture on the aetherwire news. And if you think your father will be fooled by hair dye and an oculus, however fetching it is . . .”

“No, you’re right.” Maddie slumped onto a chair. “I’ll write up everything, and let him have the credit. Except I’ll also send articles off to CJ for the morning edition. I forgot before supper to send the one about the baron being shot rather than drowning. Now I can do one about Professor Jones bursting in too. Could you get them over to the Inn for telegraphing tonight?”

“No problem. We’ve got a heli-cycle aboard for messenger runs. A night flight across the moors will be cake. Unless I get lost, that is.” Obie yawned. “I’ll just have a nap until you’re ready.”

Maddie pulled out her notebook, telegraph forms, and pen. As she settled down to work, she realized TD was still sitting silent in her pocket. She pulled him out.

“I’m going to sneak down and set TD on Lady Sarah for tonight. Where’s TC?”

“Left him on the library windowsill to record events there. Could be handy.”

“You’re a pal.” Maddie slipped down the stairs again and, seeing candlelight from the little parlour, went that way. As she’d hoped, it was empty. Lady Sarah’s voice came from the library, coaxing Professor Plumb to drink up and let Ambrose help him to bed. Maddie pocketed a couple of extra candles, set TD on a shelf among knickknacks, and said softly, “TD, at your discretion. Look and listen to Lady Sarah, wherever she goes, until I come back for you.”

Obie was fast asleep, head askew and mouth open. Maddie lit a second candle and got down to work, writing hard and fast for CJ’s morning edition, and a slower, careful summary for Hercule Hornblower, with a separate sheet as a timeline of all the suspects’ known movements. After all, she knew quite a lot about these
crétins
, first from Egypt, then from the Kettle papers, and now from her own observations. How much of it would come as a surprise to the great detective? Had he an inkling at all that Lady Sarah, the new bride, was the same woman who had run off with the jewels the baron had ordered “on approval” in Cairo? Who did he think had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to kill the baron?

While she wrote for him, she pondered for herself. The mask could not have been found with the baron, or the guilty party would not remain at Bodmin Manor. Was it Lady Sarah? Could a lady so dainty manipulate the baron’s body out of his airship, and abandon ship with sufficient skill as to be unscathed? Where was her husband during that episode? It was impossible to see the hapless Sir Ambrose as a co-conspirator. He was too guileless by half to keep such a secret. And was Lady Sarah sufficiently ruthless? She had not been known to kill before. That did not mean she had not, merely that she’d not been found out.

Mrs. Midas-White? Definitely ruthless. If she had the mask, though, she’d be long gone back to America, paying no further heed to the baron or his paltry estate. And she would not be so quick to snatch the drunken Professor Jones.

So much for the women in the case. Now for the men:

Sir Ambrose: too foolish to act alone. If he’d snuck off from Paris to kill the baron, he would have made a mull of the body’s disposal. Unless he’d fired the fatal shot and his very clever wife had orchestrated the rest, to cover up the crime. Could Ambrose keep from babbling such doings to the other men when he was, as so often, deep in drink?

Professor Plumb might have wanted the mask for himself, but it was difficult to picture the indolent academic undertaking the effort to dispose of the body and the trunk—which was, to be sure, evidence that could discredit him with his peers by proving Jones’ accusations. As for leaping from an airship over either water or land . . . the mind boggled.

Professor Jones. If he’d caught up to Baron Bodmin and found the trunk, he might have killed with a single shot. But he would never have thrown his precious research overboard. If he hadn’t seen the trunk, he had no motive for the killing. Except to take the mask, if by some strange chance he’d heard about it immediately on the baron’s brief return to England. If he’d seen the mask, he would have taken it, and likely fled to America by the first ship, not hung around getting into drunken rages over his lost work. And he would have taken his research with him.

Who did that leave? Colonel Muster. Again, sufficiently ruthless. As a military man, he could shoot, unless whatever kept him in dark lenses had damaged his eyesight. He had experience in airships, and she had seen him with her own eyes plummeting from the sky under a frail canopy. He needed money. But did he gain anything by the baron’s death? Not obviously, not unless he happened upon the mask. Which he had not found or why seize the water-stained trunk? He had known enough, however, to chance looking for the prize there.

Frustrated by the mass of possibilities, Maddie put the final period to her report with such emphasis that the nib went through the page. Using greater care, she coded her telegrams for CJ and shook Obie awake.

“Off you go for your midnight heli-cycle tour of the moors, dear fellow.”

Obie sat up, stretching. “May I look?”

She handed him the timeline. “Do you see anything amiss with this?”

He yawned and angled the page to catch the light. “In December, all your suspects were in Cairo except Ambrose, who was presumably in London making eyes at little Clarice?” She nodded. “After Christmas, the baron flew off to the desert, and Plumb and Muster returned to England. Seems straight enough. Lady Sarah—ah, that’s interesting; she stayed in Cairo under a different name for a whole month, communicating with Mrs. Midas-White. Arguing over the next steps or . . .?”

“Or hatching a new scheme for when the baron returned,” said Maddie. “Nobody knew then that he would not be coming back.”

“A fair point. For whatever reason, she flies off to Venice using your name, drops it soon after arrival, then picks it up in mid-March, when she boards the airship with Sir Ambrose and gets married en route to Paris. As you.” He grinned as Maddie let out a vexed huff. “I should hope you have better taste. They could have gone off to murder his uncle from there, if he let them know he was passing over.”

“Except he brought the mask to Cornwall,” said Maddie. “Why go all the way back to Paris? To meet the new bride?”

“Surprise for him if he did, given their previous association. I suspect even idle Ambrose would not remain married to his uncle’s mistress. Or not without a lot of money in her future. Now to mid-April, when the airship was found adrift. The colonel was either in London or not when it was found, and the baron is deemed to have gone into the sea between then and the sighting two weeks earlier over the Suez Canal. No more definite time than that?”

“The coroner could not be sure how long he was in the water, due to those schools of Shad picking the bones.” She shuddered. “For the crucial two weeks, we have no independent accounting for the colonel’s or either professor’s whereabouts. Or Mrs. Midas-White’s, come to that.”

“Madame’s minions can be on the job by morning. I’ll send her a message.” He folded the telegraph forms, tucked them into his jacket, and scrambled out the window. She latched the casement after him and hurried down to submit her report.

Hercule Hornblower had remained in the library with the other men. Maddie loitered in the hall before going in, unabashedly listening. Sir Ambrose whined about his wife’s lack of money and attention. Colonel Muster interjected cutting comments. Hornblower recounted yet another incident in his fabulous series of detecting triumphs. All as usual. She walked into the room, presented the papers tidily clipped in order, and retreated, only to slip into the parlour from the hall entrance.

TD was still there, peering from behind a standing picture frame. She asked him to speak but nothing came out. Since it was unlikely anyone here—save perhaps Obie—had any idea how to reset his mechanism, she had to assume Lady Sarah had not yet returned to this room. After a moment to wonder if Obie had called TC away from the library windowsill as he flew away, she moved TD to the mantle. It was close to the library door. If Lady Sarah went to search the library tonight, he could listen, and maybe get into a position to see what occurred.

THE NIGHT WAS
uneventful. On her way down to breakfast, Maddie found TD where she had left him, although turned slightly into the parlour and covered with more dust than she might have expected from a single night here. Fresh dust had been sifted onto the mantle too. The housekeeper had surely wiped it when turning out the room just yesterday. Odd. Maybe all the heavy men running up and down the stairs last night had shifted something in the ceiling. She peered upward, but the morning light from the hall was insufficient to show anything untoward amid the cobwebs. The young girl above the fireplace peered down sweetly with her painted eyes. Whatever fell on the mantle had not dimmed her new-dusted surface. Curious.