The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (17 page)

‘That’s enough, my man. You can spare your breath,’ said Dr Field, and showed him a blunderbuss, ready primed, which he had taken out of his desk drawer. At sight of this weapon Mr Grimshaw relapsed into a cowed silence.

‘Shall I get my fowling-piece?’ exclaimed Bonnie, and then remembered that it was with the cart in Hampstead.

Dr Field looked slightly startled but said he thought one weapon should be sufficient to keep the scoundrel in order.

At this moment Simon came back to report that a cab was waiting below, and after a solicitous farewell to Aunt Jane and Sylvia, bidding the latter keep the door locked and admit nobody, they took their departure.

At Bow Street they waited only a very few minutes while the doctor haled his prisoner into the Constabulary Office; he soon reappeared, accompanied by a couple of burly, sharp-looking individuals who marched Grimshaw between them, and they all piled into the cab again.

‘Where is he to be taken now?’ said Bonnie.

‘We shall go to Mr Gripe’s office for some
explanation
of Grimshaw’s behaviour,’ Dr Field told her. ‘He has said that he worked for Mr Gripe.’

They were soon back in the region of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and drove up to the house that Bonnie and Sylvia had seen the day before. A scared-looking clerk, hardly more than a boy, admitted them into a waiting-room, and next moment a thin, agitated, grey-haired man hurried into the room, exclaiming, ‘What can I do for you gentlemen? I am Abednego Gripe.’

He appeared excessively surprised to see the children and the manacled Mr Grimshaw. Bonnie soon decided that he could not have hatched a dark plot to obtain possession of Willoughby Chase – he looked too kind and harmless.

One of the Bow Street officers spoke up.

‘I am Sam Cardigan, sir, an officer of the constabulary. Here is my card. Can you identify this person here?’ indicating Mr Grimshaw.

‘Why yes,’ said Mr Gripe, looking at Mr Grimshaw with distaste. ‘His name is Grimshaw. He was a clerk in my office until he was dismissed for forgery.’

‘Aha!’ said the other Bow Street officer, whose name was Spock.

‘Have you ever seen him since you dismissed him?’ said Dr Field.

‘No indeed. He would have a very cold reception in this office.’

‘And yet he was seen entering here yesterday,’ snapped Cardigan.

Mr Gripe seemed surprised. ‘Not to my knowledge.’

Cardigan looked thunderously disbelieving and
was
about to burst out with his suspicions of Mr Gripe, when the little clerk who had let the party in, and who had been standing in the doorway with eyes like saucers, piped up:

‘Please, sir, I saw him.’

Mr Grimshaw darted a furious look at this speaker.

‘Who are you?’ said Cardigan.

‘Please sir, Marmot, a clerk. Yesterday while Mr Gripe was out having dinner, th-that gentleman as is tied up there came and asked me to give him the address of Miss Jane Green, sister to Sir Willoughby.’

‘And you gave it him?’

‘Yes, sir. He said he wished to take her some dividends.’

‘Dividends, indeed!’ growled Dr Field. ‘Wanted to murder her more probably.’

‘Certainly not,’ said Grimshaw, pale with fright. ‘I merely wished to ascertain from her if these children, who are the runaway wards of a friend of mine, had taken shelter with her.’

‘At three o’clock in the morning? A fine story! More likely you wanted to terrify her into signing some document giving you power over the children. And what about this Letitia Slighcarp?’ continued Dr Field, glaring at the lawyer. ‘Were you responsible for sending that female fiend to feather her nest at Willoughby Chase?’

Mr Gripe looked very much alarmed. ‘She is a distant relation of Sir Willoughby. She came with the highest references,’ he began. ‘From the Duchess of Kensington. I have them still.’ He pulled out a drawer in a cabinet and produced a paper. Cardigan scanned it.

‘A patent forgery,’ he said at once. ‘I have seen the Duchess’s signature on many documents and it is utterly unlike this.’

‘Then I have been duped!’ cried Mr Gripe, growing paler still. ‘But what can have been the object of this deceit?’

‘Why,’ said Bonnie indignantly, ‘Miss Slighcarp has taken our whole house for her own, dismissed all the servants, sent me and my cousin to live in a school that is no better than a workhouse or prison, and treated us with miserable cruelty! And I believe, too, she and Mr Grimshaw had some hand in seeing that Papa and Mamma set sail on a ship that was known to be likely to sink!’

‘This is a bad business, a very bad business,’ said Mr Gripe.

‘No, no!’ cried Mr Grimshaw, now nearly dead of terror. ‘We were not responsible for that! The ship was sunk by an unscrupulous owner to obtain the insurance. It was when I learned – through a friend who was a shipping clerk – that they were to sail on the
Thessaly
, that the plan took shape. I had seen Sir Willoughby’s letter to Mr Gripe, asking him to seek out his cousin Letitia Slighcarp, as an instructress for his daughter and so – and so – ’

‘And so you conspired with Miss Slighcarp and forged her credentials,’ said Mr Gripe angrily. ‘It is all very plain, sir! Take him away, gentlemen! Take him away and keep him fast until he can appear before a magistrate.’

‘After that it was very dull,’ said Bonnie, reporting the scene to Sylvia later. ‘I had to tell the Bow Street
officers
every single thing I could remember that Miss Slighcarp had done, and the clerk wrote it all down, and Mr Gripe looked more and more shocked, especially when I told what I had seen when we looked through the hole in the secret panel and watched them tearing up Papa’s will and all the other documents.

‘And the end of it all is, Sylvia, that Mr Grimshaw is committed to prison until the Assizes, when he will stand his trial for fraud, and the Bow Street officers are to go to Willoughby tomorrow to seize Miss Slighcarp!’

‘How surprised she will be!’ exclaimed Sylvia with lively pleasure. ‘I almost wish I could be there to see!’

‘But, Sylvia, you are to be there! They most particularly requested that you and I should be taken too, to act as witnesses.’

‘But who will look after Aunt Jane?’ inquired Sylvia anxiously.

‘Dr Field has said that he would procure a nurse for a few days. And it need be for only two – you can return directly Miss Slighcarp is apprehended. And Sylvia, as soon as Aunt Jane is well enough to travel, I have asked Mr Gripe to arrange that she shall come and live at Willoughby, and be our guardian.’

‘Oh
yes
!’ exclaimed Sylvia, her face brightening, ‘what a splendid plan, Bonnie!’

It was a gay and lively party that assembled in the train next day – very different from that earlier and sorrowful departure when Sylvia had taken leave of Aunt Jane. A special coupé compartment had been chartered, and the Bow Street officers had no objection to Simon and his geese travelling in it as well. Dr
Field
was remaining to keep an eye on Aunt Jane, but he bade the children a cordial farewell and invited them to come and sleep in his apartment again when they returned to take Aunt Jane to Willoughby. Mr Gripe the lawyer was with them, and had given his clerk instructions to procure a luncheon hamper from which came the most savoury smells. Sylvia smiled faintly as she thought of the other tiny food-packet and Mr Grimshaw’s sumptuous jam-filled cakes.

‘I suppose he only pretended to have forgotten who he was when the portmanteau fell on him’, she said to Bonnie.

‘So that he would be taken to Willoughby,’ said Bonnie, nodding. ‘How I wish that we had left him in the train!’

‘Still, he did save me from the wolves.’

There were no wolves to be seen on this journey. The packs had all retreated to the bleak north country, and the train ran through smiling pasture-lands, all astir with sheep and lambs, or through green and golden woods carpeted with bluebells.

The day passed gaily, with songs and story-telling – even the dry Mr Gripe proved to know a number of amusing tales – and in between the laughter and chat Cardigan and Spock, the Bow Street officers, busily wrote down in their notebooks more and more of the dreadful deeds of Miss Slighcarp recounted to them by Bonnie and Sylvia.

They reached Willoughby Station at dawn. Mr Gripe had written to one of the inns at Blastburn for a chaise and it was there to meet them.

‘How different this road seems,’ said Sylvia, as they
set
off at a gallop. ‘Last time I travelled along it there were wolves and snow and it was cold and dark – now I see primroses everywhere and I am so hot in these clothes that I can hardly breathe.’

They were still wearing the tinker children’s clothes Pattern had made them, for there had been no time in London to get any others made. Mr Gripe’s eye winced when it encountered them, for he liked children to look neat and nicely dressed.

‘Let us hope that Miss Slighcarp has not got rid of all our own clothes,’ said Bonnie.

When they reached the boundary of Willoughby Park they saw an enormous notice, new since they had left. It said:

WILLOUGHBY CHASE SCHOOL

A select Seminary for the Daughters of Gentlemen and the Nobility Boarders and Parlour Boarders

Principals:
M
ISS
L. S
LIGHCARP AND
M
RS
B
RISKET

‘What impertinence!’ gasped Bonnie. ‘Can she really have made our home into a school?’

‘This is worse even than I had feared,’ said Mr Gripe grimly, as the chaise turned into the gateway.

They took the longer and more roundabout road that led to the back of the house, for the Bow Street officers wanted to surprise Miss Slighcarp.

‘Didn’t you say there was a secret passage, miss?’ Sam Cardigan said to Bonnie.

‘Yes, and a priests’ hole and an oubliette –’

‘Very good. Couldn’t be better. We’ll put some ginger in the good lady’s gravy.’

He explained his plan to Mr Gripe and the children, and then they knocked at the back door. It was opened by James.

‘Miss Bonnie! Miss Sylvia!’ he exclaimed, scarlet with joy and surprise. They both flung themselves on him and hugged him.

‘James, dear James! Are you all right? Is Pattern all right? What is going on here?’

‘Terrible doings, miss –’

‘Now, now,’ said Sam Cardigan. ‘Pleasure at seeing old acquaintance all very well, but business is business. We must get under cover. My man, where can this carriage be concealed?’

‘It can go in the coach-house, sir,’ James told him. ‘There’s only Miss Slighcarp’s landau now.’

The carriage was hastily put away, and the conspirators took refuge in the dairy.

‘Now James,’ said Bonnie, dancing with excitement, ‘you must go and tell Miss Slighcarp that Sylvia and I have come back, and that we are
very
sad and sorry for having run away. Don’t say anything about these gentlemen.’

‘Yes, miss,’ said James, his eyes beginning to twinkle. ‘She’s teaching just now, up in the schoolroom. The pupils study for an hour before breakfast.’

‘Is the entrance to the secret passage still open, James? Has Miss Slighcarp ever discovered it?’

‘No to the second and yes to the first, Miss Bonnie,’ said James, and pulled aside the cupboard and
horse-blankets
which he had arranged to conceal the opening.

‘Capital! Go to her quickly, then, James! Tell her we are starving!’

‘You don’t look it, begging your pardon, miss,’ said James, grinning, and left the room. Mr Gripe and the two Bow Street officers squeezed their way into the secret passage. Simon, who had left his geese in the stable-yard, hesitated, but Mr Gripe said, ‘Come on, come on, boy. The more witnesses, the better,’ so he followed.

Bonnie and Sylvia spent the time while they waited for James’s return in artistically dirtying and untidying each other, rubbing dust and coal on their faces, rumpling their hair, and making themselves look as dejected and orphanly as possible.

James came back with a long face.

‘You’re to come up to the schoolroom, young ladies. At once.’

He led the way, and they followed in silence. The house bore traces everywhere of its new use as a school. On the crystal chandelier in the ballroom ropes had been slung for climbing, and the billiards-table had been exchanged for backboards. The portraits of ancestors in the long gallery had been replaced by notice-boards and the gold-leaf and ormolu tables were covered with chalk-powder and ink-stains.

Even though they knew they had good friends close at hand, the children could not control a certain swelled and breathless feeling in the region of their midriffs as they approached the schoolroom door.

James tapped at the door and in response to Miss Slighcarp’s ‘Come in’ opened it and stood aside to let the children through.

A quick glance showed them that all the furniture had been removed and that the room was filled with desks. The more senior children from Mrs Brisket’s school were sitting at them, with expressions varying from nervous excitement to petrifaction on their faces.

Miss Slighcarp stood on a raised platform by a blackboard. She had a long wooden pointer in her hand. Mrs Brisket was there, too, sitting at the instructress’s desk. She wore a stern and forbidding expression, but on Miss Slighcarp’s face there was a look of triumph.

‘So!’ she said – a long, hissing exhalation. ‘So, you have returned! – Come here.’

They advanced, slowly and trembling, until they stood below the platform. Miss Slighcarp was so tall that they had almost to lean back to look up at her.

‘P-please take us back into your school, Miss Slighcarp,’ faltered Bonnie. ‘We’re so cold and tired and hungry.’

Into Sylvia’s mind came a sudden recollection of the grouse pies and apricots they had eaten on the train. She bit her lip, and tried to look sorrowful.

Behind them, James quietly poked the fire, but no one noticed him. All eyes were on the returning truants.

‘Hungry!’ said Miss Slighcarp. ‘You’ll be hungrier still before I’ve done with you. Do you think you can run away, spend two months idling and playing on the moors, return when it suits you, and then expect to be given roast beef and pudding? You’ll have no food for three days! Perhaps that will teach you something. And
you
shall both be beaten, and we’ll see what a taste of the dungeons will do for your spirit. James, go and get the dungeon keys.’