The Trouble at Wakeley Court (An Angela Marchmont Mystery Book 8) (13 page)

‘I don’t know, ma’am,’ replied William, ‘but I thought you would want to know as soon as possible.’

‘I don’t suppose he told anybody he was going?’ said Hesketh.

William shook his head.

‘None of the servants I spoke to knew anything about it,’ he said.

‘We must find out whether anybody knows where he has gone,’ said Hesketh. He turned to Miss Bell. ‘What exactly do we know about this man Edwards?’ he said. ‘He is new, I know, and you said he had excellent references, but other than that what can you tell me about him?’

‘Well, er—’ began Miss Bell, who was used to being in charge and was slightly taken aback at Mr. Hesketh’s newly authoritative tone. ‘I know he was formerly employed by the Marquess of Bessington, who sang his praises most highly.’

‘Oh, then you followed up the references,’ said Hesketh.

‘Of course I did,’ said Miss Bell indignantly. ‘I always do. I wrote to the address given and received a letter in reply which assured me of Mr. Edwards’ honesty and capability.’

‘I shall take a look at that letter later, if you don’t mind,’ said Hesketh. ‘I rather wonder whether it wasn’t a forgery.’

‘If it
was
Edwards who lured Irina away from the school, I wonder how he did it?’ said Angela. ‘I suppose he might have sent her a letter purporting to be from someone she trusted. We must ask the girls whether Irina had received any mysterious communications lately.’

‘Excuse me if I am a little slow,’ said Miss Finch, who could contain her curiosity no longer, ‘but am I correct in thinking, Mrs. Marchmont, that your visit to Wakeley Court has nothing in fact to do with the new Mathematics scholarship? It seems to me that you know an awful lot about what has happened for someone who is meant to be merely visiting.’

‘I certainly did come here to make arrangements for the scholarship,’ Angela assured her. ‘That’s true enough. However, Mr. Hesketh’s superior in the Intelligence office knew that I was intending to visit, and since I have done a little work for him in the past he asked me to help Mr. Hesketh investigate the threat to Princess Irina while I was here.’

‘Really?’ said Miss Finch, looking Angela up and down in undisguised surprise. ‘I must say, I should never have guessed it. You don’t look at all like a detective.’

Angela resisted the urge to ask Miss Finch exactly how she thought a detective ought to look, and merely said politely:

‘No?’

Mr. Hesketh glanced at his watch.

‘It is nearly nine o’clock,’ he said. ‘I shall give this Fazackerley fellow a little more time to sleep off whatever it was he was drinking last night, and then I’ll go and question him. Does anybody know when Miss Fazackerley is due back?’

‘She usually arrives shortly after lunch,’ said Miss Finch.

‘His hard-luck story may well be true,’ said Hesketh. ‘Perhaps he really did come just to beg some food and blankets from his sister, but we can’t let him go until we are sure of it. I should say he hasn’t the wits to plot anything off his own bat, but someone might have paid him to kidnap the Princess and deliver her to the real ringleader. We simply can’t be sure at present, and until we are he will have to stay here. He is locked safely in my room for now and so we have nothing to fear from him.’

‘Very well,’ said Miss Bell.

‘In the meantime I had better telephone Mr. Jameson,’ said Hesketh. ‘He has asked me to keep him informed of developments. I think he is hoping that we will find the Princess before he has to confess all to the Foreign Secretary and the whole thing blows up into an international incident. After that I shall go and speak to the servants and find out what they know of Edwards’ movements. Unless you would prefer to do that, Miss Bell?’ he said politely.

‘No,’ said Miss Bell, in tacit acknowledgment of Mr. Hesketh’s present authority in the matter. ‘I think you had better do it.’

‘Very good,’ said Hesketh. ‘In that case, perhaps you would be so good as to look out Edwards’ letters of reference?’

‘Certainly,’ said Miss Bell.

‘And perhaps Miss Finch can arrange to allow Mr. Everich to speak to the Princess’s friends this morning.’

‘Of course,’ said Miss Finch.

‘I think that is all for the present,’ said Hesketh. ‘The police are scouring the area and so there is little we can do in that regard. All we can do is wait and see what they come up with.’

Everyone nodded and murmured their agreement, and there was a general movement towards the door as everyone went off to do what had been asked of them. Angela and William were left standing in the passage, the only ones who had been given nothing to do. Angela had no intention of being idle, however. She turned to William and smiled.

‘Let’s go and do some detecting,’ she said.

‘We didn’t have much of an opportunity to look around carefully last night,’ said Angela as they walked across the grounds. ‘Miss Devlin and I were too preoccupied with finding Irina as quickly as possible, and had no time to scout around for clues, or anything of that sort. As a matter of fact, nobody has had much time to think at all, as we’ve all been too busy chasing about, but we really ought to try and discover exactly what she did after she came outside.’

‘Are you quite sure she left of her own accord?’ said William.

‘As sure as I can be,’ said Angela, ‘since I was first on the spot, so to speak. I’m fairly certain it was she who woke me up as she passed my room. I followed her downstairs and discovered that she had run out into the grounds. I then wasted far too much time in fetching Mr. Hesketh, and things got a little confused, and by the time we all came downstairs again it was too late. I do wish I’d followed her when I had the chance,’ she said. ‘I could kick myself for it. Had I run after her at the time then all this might never have happened. But I thought the person I was following was an intruder and didn’t particularly want to get into an altercation. I never dreamt for a second it was actually Irina.’

‘You weren’t to know, ma’am,’ said William.

‘I suppose not,’ she said. ‘And there’s no use in crying over spilt milk anyway, so I’ll just have to try and put things right if I can. Now, then, since we are pretty certain that Irina came out voluntarily, we must ask ourselves why.’

‘To meet someone?’ said William.

‘I think so,’ said Angela. ‘Unless she was walking in her sleep, I can’t think of a single reason why she should suddenly take it into her head to run out of the school grounds and into the village. So, let us assume that she had arranged to meet someone. Where?’

‘The summer-house looks like a pretty good place,’ said William.

‘Don’t you think? As I said, we just peeped in quickly last night, but this time I’d like to take a good look around.’

They arrived at the building in question as she spoke, and stopped. There was not much to it; it was merely a little wooden hut, white-painted with a pitched roof, with inside a few old easy chairs and one or two low tables. The girls came in here in the warmer weather to read or day-dream or do nothing at all, but avoided it in the winter as it was damp and draughty and had a tendency to mould. Angela opened the door and they both stepped inside. There was a musty smell of dry, rotten wood—along with something else. Angela sniffed the air delicately.

‘Cigarette smoke,’ she said. ‘Very faint, but someone has been smoking in here.’

William bent down and picked something up. It was a cigarette-end.

‘Are the girls allowed to smoke?’ he said.

‘I sincerely hope not,’ said Angela. ‘That’s not to say they don’t do it, of course. Here, let me see.’

She examined the remains of the cigarette. It was a very slim affair of a type with which she was unfamiliar, but other than that she could deduce nothing from it. She gave it up.

‘I don’t know what I thought it would tell me,’ she said. ‘All I know is that it’s not one of mine, and whoever smoked it wasn’t wearing lipstick. Now, is there anything else?’

They poked about a little more, then Angela spotted a small, dark splash of something on the edge of a low table. She peered at it more closely.

‘What is that, do you suppose?’ she said.

William came to join her.

‘It might be blood, I guess,’ he said doubtfully. ‘It’s hard to tell against the wood.’

‘It’s quite dry,’ said Angela.

She took out her handkerchief, rubbed a corner of it against the stain, and then held it up to the light. There was a brownish smear on the fabric.

‘It certainly looks like blood,’ she said. ‘It might have nothing to do with Irina, of course.’

‘Even if it does, there’s not much of it,’ said William.

‘No,’ said Angela thoughtfully. ‘Certainly not enough to have caused whoever shed it too much damage. I’d like to look around outside, though, just to make certain there’s no more.’

They left the summer-house and spent some minutes scouring the surrounding ground for clues, but could find nothing conclusive.

‘Do you think the person the Princess came to meet waited in the summer-house for her?’ said William at last.

‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ said Angela. ‘It was rather chilly last night and I shouldn’t have fancied standing outside for hours myself.’

‘But he wasn’t here by the time you arrived.’

‘Of course not,’ said Angela. ‘Now that I come to think about it, we must have been making a tremendous racket. Anyone might have heard us coming a mile off. I think Irina probably met whoever it was, and then they heard or saw us coming and crept out before we got here. I don’t know what happened after that, but I imagine they must have split up and hidden in the bushes over there, waiting for us to leave. Miss Devlin and I looked around here and then went over to those huts. That gave Irina the opportunity to escape along the path to the village.’

‘But what happened to the person she went to meet?’

‘I’ve no idea. Perhaps he was hiding in the bushes too. It would have been easy enough. After all, there were only the two of us and the grounds are pretty big. He might even have escaped on to the path himself, before Irina did.’

‘But why?’

‘There you have me,’ admitted Angela. She glanced about her one last time and then said, ‘Let’s go and take another look at the spot where she disappeared.’

They followed the path that led through the trees, looking carefully about them as they did so.

‘She’d seen us by this time, and started running,’ said Angela. ‘When we came out from the woods she was already quite a way ahead of us.’

As they emerged on to the road, they saw a police-car approaching, heading in the direction of the village. Evidently the search had begun. They waited for it to pass, then walked along to the place where the man had stepped out and Irina had seemed to disappear into the hedgerow. Although it was Sunday, there were several people about, and so they had to be circumspect in their search. If Angela had been hoping to find a clue, however, she was disappointed, for even in daylight there was no sign that the hedge had been disturbed at all.

‘I was almost certain this was where she vanished,’ she said in perplexity. ‘It looked as though she went through the hedge here. I suppose my eyes must have been playing tricks on me. The moon was out, but perhaps it was still too dark to get a true picture of what happened.’

‘Where exactly was the moon?’ said William.

‘Over there, I think. Why?’ said Angela.

‘Why, then, the hedge must have cast a shadow a little way into the road,’ said William. ‘Are you sure she didn’t just disappear into the shadow and keep going?’

Angela considered this.

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she said. ‘Yes, she might have. We assumed she had gone through the hedge because the man we saw seemed to step out and pull her into it. But I suppose it’s always possible that he just drew her to the side of the road and pulled her along in the shadows. But where did they go after that?’

‘Let’s go and find out,’ said William.

They carried on in the direction of the village for another two hundred yards or so, then came to a halt.

‘Oh!’ said Angela.

They were standing by a narrow gap in the hedgerow which was easily passable with only a little squeeze.

‘Do you think this is it?’ said William. He peered through the gap. ‘There’s just a field on the other side,’ he said.

‘Well, if they didn’t want to be seen it would make sense to get off the road as soon as possible,’ said Angela.

‘I guess so,’ said William. He scrambled through the hedge, then held it aside to allow Angela to step through. There was not exactly a path on the other side, but a few yards of bare earth indicated the direction most feet took when they came through this way. The short-cut passed diagonally across the field to a gate. Angela and William headed towards it. The gate in turn led out onto a little path and through a clump of trees.

‘Look!’ said Angela suddenly, once they were through the gate. She bent over and picked up another cigarette-end. ‘It’s the same type as before.’

‘Then we’re on the right track,’ said William.

They carried on doggedly through the wood. Beyond it was a wall with another gate in it, and on the other side of that a road. Although the weather had been dry for several weeks, the ground here under the trees was still soft, and they both saw the tyre tracks by the gate at the same time. William crouched down to examine them.

‘They had a car waiting here,’ said Angela.

‘A big one,’ agreed William. He held up another cigarette-end. Angela took it. It was the same type again. Angela leaned over the gate and looked up and down the road. One way led back to the village, and the other towards the coast. Presumably the car had taken the latter route.

‘So, then,’ she said. ‘For some reason, the man brought Irina this way and drove off with her in the car that someone had thoughtfully left here earlier.’

‘I guess they came this way so as to avoid going through the village,’ said William.

‘Yes,’ said Angela. ‘It seems to be a short-cut. But I don’t understand the delay.’

‘What delay?’

‘Why, the delay in their leaving,’ said Angela. She saw his puzzled look and explained. ‘I followed Irina to the back entrance of the building, then came back to get Mr. Hesketh, but it was at least twenty minutes before Miss Devlin and I came out to search the grounds, if not more. If this man was intending to kidnap Irina—or even if she was intending to run off with him for some unknown reason, then why was she, at least, still hanging about the summer-house when we got there? One would have thought that she would have taken good care to get away as quickly as possible rather than skulk around as she did. I don’t understand it at all.’