The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective - Catherine Louisa Pirkis (read aloud books .TXT) 📗

us at our ease with each other now,” she said, as she poured out hot tea for Loveday, and piled up a blazing fire. “Everyone fancies that everyone else is suspecting him or her, and trying to rake up past words or deeds to bring in as evidence. The whole house seems under a cloud. And at this time of year, too; just when everything as a rule is at its merriest!” and here she gave a doleful glance to the big bunch of holly and mistletoe hanging from the ceiling.

“I suppose you are generally very merry downstairs at Christmas time?” said Loveday. “Servants’ balls, theatricals, and all that sort of thing?”

“I should think we were! When I think of this time last year and the fun we all had, I can scarcely believe it is the same house. Our ball always follows my lady’s ball, and we have permission to ask our friends to it, and we keep it up as late as ever we please. We begin our evening with a concert and recitations in character, then we have a supper and then we dance right on till morning; but this year!”—she broke off, giving a long, melancholy shake of her head that spoke volumes.

“I suppose,” said Loveday, “some of your friends are very clever as musicians or reciters?”

“Very clever indeed. Sir George and my lady are always present during the early part of the evening, and I should like you to have seen Sir George last year laughing fit to kill himself at Harry Emmett dressed in prison dress with a bit of oakum in his hand, reciting the “Noble Convict!” Sir George said if the young man had gone on the stage, he would have been bound to make his fortune.”

“Half a cup, please,” said Loveday, presenting her cup. “Who was this Harry Emmett then—a sweetheart of one of the maids?”

“Oh, he would flirt with them all, but he was sweetheart to none. He was footman to Colonel James, who is a great friend of Sir George’s, and Harry was constantly backwards and forwards bringing messages from his master. His father, I think, drove a cab in London, and Harry for a time did so also; then he took it into his head to be a gentleman’s servant, and great satisfaction he gave as such. He was always such a bright, handsome young fellow and so full of fun, that everyone liked him. But I shall tire you with all this; and you, of course, want to talk about something so different;” and the housekeeper sighed again, as the thought of the dreadful robbery entered her brain once more.

“Not at all. I am greatly interested in you and your festivities. Is Emmett still in the neighbourhood? I should amazingly like to hear him recite myself.”

“I’m sorry to say he left Colonel James about six months ago. We all missed him very much at first. He was a good, kind-hearted young man, and I remember he told me he was going away to look after his dear old grandmother, who had a sweet-stuff shop somewhere or other, but where I can’t remember.”

Loveday was leaning back in her chair now, with eyelids drooped so low that she literally looked out through “slits” instead of eyes.

Suddenly and abruptly she changed the conversation.

“When will it be convenient for me to see Lady Cathrow’s dressing-room?” she asked.

The housekeeper looked at her watch. “Now, at once,” she answered: “it’s a quarter to five now and my lady sometimes goes up to her room to rest for half an hour before she dresses for dinner.”

“Is Stephanie still in attendance on Lady Cathrow?” Miss Brooke asked as she followed the housekeeper up the back stairs to the bedroom floor.

“Yes, Sir George and my lady have been goodness itself to us through this trying time, and they say we are all innocent till we are proved guilty, and will have it that none of our duties are to be in any way altered.”

“Stephanie is scarcely fit to perform hers, I should imagine?”

“Scarcely. She was in hysterics nearly from morning till night for the first two or three days after the detectives came down, but now she has grown sullen, eats nothing and never speaks a word to any of us except when she is obliged. This is my lady’s dressing-room, walk in please.”

Loveday entered a large, luxuriously furnished room, and naturally made her way straight to the chief point of attraction in it—the iron safe fitted into the wall that separated the dressing-room from the bedroom.

It was a safe of the ordinary description, fitted with a strong iron door and Chubb lock. And across this door was written with chalk in characters that seemed defiant in their size and boldness, the words: “To be let, unfurnished.”

Loveday spent about five minutes in front of this safe, all her attention concentrated upon the big, bold writing.

She took from her pocket-book a narrow strip of tracing-paper and compared the writing on it, letter by letter, with that on the safe door. This done she turned to Mrs. Williams and professed herself ready to follow her to the room below.

Mrs. Williams looked surprised. Her opinion of Miss Brooke’s professional capabilities suffered considerable diminution.

“The gentlemen detectives,” she said, “spent over an hour in this room; they paced the floor, they measured the candles, they—”

“Mrs. Williams,” interrupted Loveday, “I am quite ready to look at the room below.” Her manner had changed from gossiping friendliness to that of the business woman hard at work at her profession.

Without another word, Mrs. Williams led the way to the little room which had proved itself to be the “weak point” of the house.

They entered it by the door which opened into a passage leading to the back-stairs of the house. Loveday found the room exactly what it had been described to her by Mr. Dyer. It needed no second glance at the window to see the ease with which anyone could open it from the outside, and swing themselves into the room, when once the brass catch had been unfastened.

Loveday wasted no time here. In fact, much to Mrs. Williams’s surprise and disappointment, she merely walked across the room, in at one door and out at the opposite one, which opened into the large inner hall of the house.

Here, however, she paused to ask a question:

“Is that chair always placed exactly in that position?” she said, pointing to an oak chair that stood immediately outside the room they had just quitted.

The housekeeper answered in the affirmative. It was a warm corner. “My lady” was particular that everyone who came to the house on messages should have a comfortable place to wait in.

“I shall be glad if you will show me to my room now,” said Loveday, a little abruptly; “and will you kindly send up to me a county trade directory, if, that is, you have such a thing in the house?”

Mrs. Williams, with an air of offended dignity, led the way to the bedroom quarters once more. The worthy housekeeper felt as if her own dignity had, in some sort, been injured by the want of interest Miss Brooke had evinced in the rooms which, at the present moment, she considered the “show” rooms of the house.

“Shall I send someone to help you unpack?” she asked, a little stiffly, at the door of Loveday’s room.

“No, thank you; there will not be much unpacking to do. I must leave here by the first up-train to-morrow morning.”

“To-morrow morning! Why, I have told everyone you will be here at least a fortnight!”

“Ah, then you must explain that I have been suddenly summoned home by telegram. I’m sure I can trust you to make excuses for me. Do not, however, make them before supper-time. I shall like to sit down to that meal with you. I suppose I shall see Stephanie then?”

The housekeeper answered in the affirmative, and went her way, wondering over the strange manners of the lady whom, at first, she had been disposed to consider “such a nice, pleasant, conversable person!”

At supper-time, however, when the upper-servants assembled at what was, to them, the pleasantest meal of the day, a great surprise was to greet them.

Stephanie did not take her usual place at table, and a fellow-servant, sent to her room to summon her returned, saying that the room was empty, and Stephanie was nowhere to be found.

Loveday and Mrs. Williams together went to the girl’s bedroom. It bore its usual appearance: no packing had been done in it, and, beyond her hat and jacket, the girl appeared to have taken nothing away with her.

On enquiry, it transpired that Stephanie had, as usual, assisted Lady Cathrow to dress for dinner; but after that not a soul in the house appeared to have seen her.

Mrs. Williams thought the matter of sufficient importance to be at once reported to her master and mistress; and Sir George, in his turn, promptly dispatched a messenger to Mr. Bates, at the “King’s Head,” to summon him to an immediate consultation.

Loveday dispatched a messenger in another direction—to young Mr. Holt, at his farm, giving him particulars of the girl’s disappearance.

Mr. Bates had a brief interview with Sir George in his study, from which he emerged radiant. He made a point of seeing Loveday before he left the Court, sending a special request to her that she would speak to him for a minute in the outside drive.

Loveday put her hat on, and went out to him. She found him almost dancing for glee.

“Told you so! told you so! Now, didn’t I, Miss Brooke?” he exclaimed. “We’ll come upon her traces before morning, never fear. I’m quite prepared. I knew what was in her mind all along. I said to myself, when that girl bolts it will be after she has dressed my lady for dinner—when she has two good clear hours all to herself, and her absence from the house won’t be noticed, and when, without much difficulty, she can catch a train leaving Huxwell for Wreford. Well, she’ll get to Wreford safe enough; but from Wreford she’ll be followed every step of the way she goes. Only yesterday I set a man on there—a keen fellow at this sort of thing—and gave him full directions; and he’ll hunt her down to her hole properly. Taken nothing with her, do you say? What does that matter? She thinks she’ll find all she wants where she’s going—‘the feathered nest’ I spoke to you about this morning. Ha! ha! Well, instead of stepping into it, as she fancies she will, she’ll walk straight into a detective’s arms, and land her pal there into the bargain. There’ll be two of them netted before another forty-eight hours are over our heads, or my name’s not Jeremiah Bates.”

“What are you going to do now?” asked Loveday, as the man finished his long speech.

“Now! I’m back to the “King’s Head” to wait for a telegram from my colleague at Wreford. Once he’s got her in front of him he’ll give me instructions at what point to meet him. You see, Huxwell being such an out-of-the-way place, and only one train leaving between 7.30 and 10.15, makes us really positive that Wreford must be the girl’s destination and relieves my mind from all anxiety on the matter.”

“Does it?” answered Loveday gravely. “I can see another possible destination for the girl—the stream that runs through the wood we drove past this morning. Good night, Mr. Bates, it’s cold out here. Of course so soon as you have any news you’ll send it up to Sir George.”

The household sat up late that night, but no news was received of Stephanie from