“I can’t stop now, Auntie.”
“Verity!” she exclaimed in outrage.
“Miss Musselwhite may be in danger. I must go.” I turned to walk backward, seeing her openmouthed stare. “If Chief Inspector Thoreau returns before us, tell him Reg knows where we’ve gone.” It had seemed the best precaution to explain matters as he and his valet helped me locate a map. Then I wheeled about and hurried after Sidney.
The Pierce-Arrow rounded the circle and set off down the drive, her tires spitting crushed stone. We crested the hill and were hurtling downward toward the gatehouse when the sight of another motorcar approaching made Sidney brake hard. I didn’t recognize the vehicle, but I did recognize the driver who sat behind the wheel.
“Oh, thank heavens!” I gasped as Sidney pulled to a stop, hailing them.
“Did you not have faith in my ability to make good time?” Alec quipped through the window, evidently having convinced Max to allow him to drive. Likely because this wasn’t his pale yellow Rolls-Royce, which was back on the Isle of Wight, but another vehicle.
“Leave the motorcar there and get in,” Sidney snapped, having no patience for his bluster. “And bring your pistols.”
Alec and Max needed no further encouragement. No sooner had they climbed into the rear seat than Sidney set off again at a cracking pace. We quickly filled them in on the most pertinent details of what we were about to face as we bumped and shuddered over the ruts in the drive. Once we reached the road, the surface smoothed out and I was better able to wrangle the ordnance map and plot the route before us.
“Turn left here,” I told Sidney as we approached a side road. “And then left again at the next crossroads.”
Alec leaned forward to read over my shoulder. “What are we up against?”
“If I’m judging the position of the airfield correctly, then the barn he speaks of should stand about here,” I tapped the map. “The land around it appears relatively level. And there’s no way to easily reach it from the rear.” I frowned, racking my brain to uncover some flaw, but there simply weren’t any. “He chose well,” I muttered, delivering the bad news. “There is no way we can make a sneak attack or even creep up on the place without being seen from every angle.”
As if in answer to this pronouncement, the droning sound of an approaching aeroplane reached my ears. I turned toward the window, leaning forward to try to see up and behind us, just as Max and Alec did.
“Bloody hell,” Sidney cursed as the aeroplane loomed into sight.
If it was Captain Willoughby, and I had no doubt it was, and he had a mind to shoot or drop a bomb on us, there was nothing we could do to escape it. Not short of careening into the ditch.
Sidney pressed down on the gas pedal, fruitlessly trying to outpace the light bomber just as he’d done on our first trip to Littlemote nearly a fortnight ago. I considered leaning out the window and firing my pistol up at the aeroplane, but what good would that do? The likelihood of my hitting it at that altitude was slim, and the likelihood of the bullet doing any damage almost nil.
I gripped the seat beneath me, bracing as the bomber buzzed nearer. As it roared over us, I held my breath, listening for the familiar whistle of a dropping bomb.
CHAPTER 28
But no telltale whistle came. No thud. And certainly no explosion. The aeroplane followed the road ahead of us and then banked right, away from the airfield looming up on our left. I inhaled sharply, hardly able to believe my eyes. Was it headed toward that weathered stone barn in the distance surrounded by trees? Sidney applied the brakes, watching in rapt fascination along with the rest of us as a projectile suddenly dropped from the Ninak. It disappeared behind the screen of trees, and I braced again, but there was no resulting explosion.
“A dud,” Alec guessed.
“Or a practice bomb,” Max suggested.
I didn’t know which was more likely, but when the aeroplane began to swing around for another pass, I realized he was providing us the distraction we so desperately needed. Sidney seemed to recognize this at the same moment, for he accelerated toward the airfield’s front gates and then made a sharp right turn onto the narrow lane. The three of us who were not driving gripped our pistols in preparation as the growl of the bomber’s return competed with the rumble of the Pierce-Arrow’s engine. The aeroplane dipped toward the barn, and another projectile came hurtling down.
This time we were close enough to see the men positioned outside scatter, diving for cover. When the shell struck the earth with a pronounced thud, sending earth and debris scattering several yards, I knew it for what it was. A practice bomb.
Sidney braked, sending the motorcar’s rear wheels careening in the soft gravel before we came to a stop. We threw open the doors and darted after each of the men, shouting directions to each other, before they could recover. Alec cornered one man, easily disarming him, while Sidney and Max took out another.
Keeping low, I crept toward the barn, knowing instinctively that was where Scott would be with Miss Musselwhite. When he appeared suddenly in the doorway, an arm around Miss Musselwhite’s neck, holding her in front of him as a shield, I lifted my Webley to point it at him.
“Careful, Mrs. Kent,” he fairly spat, raising his own pistol and pressing it into the side of his hostage’s abdomen, who gasped. “I don’t think you want to do that.” His face was pale, the right side sporting an angry scar with fresh stitches from the outer cover of his eye down his cheek to his chin. I tried not to cringe at the evidence of what my hat pin had done, even though he’d deserved it. His gaze flicked toward the men approaching behind me, their footsteps crunching in the dirt and stone. “Though, since you didn’t follow my orders, by rights I should shoot her now. But she’s proving useful.”
His head jerked back, surveying the sky overhead as the aeroplane swung in closer for another pass. I could only hope this time Captain Willoughby would forgo the bombing practice. He roared past, banking sharply, and as I lifted my gaze briefly I could have sworn he saluted.
Perhaps Ardmore truly didn’t want me killed. Reluctantly, I had to admit, if we got out of this alive, some of our thanks for that was owed to him and Willoughby. It rankled, but I’d never been one to flinch from the truth. And I wasn’t about to start now.
Whatever the case, I knew Willoughby would be long gone by the time we finished here, taking his answers with him.
Focusing all my attention once again on Scott, I could see that he was struggling to regain his self-control. Those practice bombs had shaken him, and I felt an unwelcome pulse of empathy. After all, the shell that had destroyed that dugout outside Bailleul had thrown us both. How many other similar incidences had he survived? How many had his men?
“I suppose that was your doing,” he snarled. “I don’t know why I ever believed you’d play fair. You didn’t before.”
I scowled at him in bafflement. The man wasn’t making any sense. When before? Surely he didn’t blame me for that shell.
I inhaled a deep, even breath, and then another. “What do you want?”
“You.” The word was implacable.
“In exchange for Miss Musselwhite?”
Her eyes were closed, her breath sawing in and out of her lungs.
“Yes.”
I tilted my head, trying to understand him. “And what do you intend to do to me?”
I heard someone’s feet shift behind me and knew without looking that it was Sidney. However, he didn’t interfere.
“Turn you in to the authorities.” His eyes narrowed. “Make you pay for what you’ve done.” With my life. That’s what went unsaid. And what he really intended for me. After all, he seemed to have already tried and convicted me. Why not forgo the justice and move straight to the judgment?
“And what have I done?”
“You know,” he snapped, grinding the pistol into Miss Musselwhite’s side. She cried out, plainly terrified he would pull the trigger. “You know.”
“That shell outside Bailleul?�
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“It wasn’t a shell.”
“Yes, it was,” I replied calmly, hoping to talk some sense into him. “It fell from the sky . . .”
He shook his head vehemently.
“It did. I heard the . . .” My words fumbled to a halt, the truth striking me like a punch to the gut. There had been no telltale whistle, no customary shriek of a shell arcing our way. I’d been arguing with Scott and then there was an explosion. “Dear God,” I gasped. “It was a bomb.” That’s why I kept dreaming about it. The general and his staff hadn’t been killed by a randomly dropped shell, but by a bomb planted there by someone. When I’d been thrown during the blast and rattled by the subsequent shelling, I’d somehow mixed up or forgotten the details.
“Don’t act like you didn’t know,” Scott sneered, pulling my gaze back to him. “You put it there.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No, listen to me. I was sent there to warn the general there was a traitor among his staff providing information to the enemy. There were intercepted messages from him as proof.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Then why wasn’t Military Intelligence given the task of telling him? Why send”—his gaze scoured me up and down, clearly finding me lacking—“you.”
I was used to being belittled and discounted simply because I was a woman. Many times, during my more audacious missions, that was precisely why I succeeded. But such words would be wasted on a man like Scott, so I went straight to the truth. “Because we suspected the traitor was connected to Military Intelligence, and so he would be warned.”
Having served with Military Intelligence during the war, Scott straightened in affront.
“Given the success of that bomb, it sounds like the information still leaked out to him.”
But Scott refused to listen. “You planted it. You killed six good men.” His eyes glittered maniacally. “And now you’re going to pay.”
In the split second before he shifted his gun, I knew what he was going to do. And when I should have fired my Webley, I hesitated, knowing the aim on the British weapon was rarely true. Had it been a German Luger, I would have had more confidence, but all I had was Max’s borrowed Webley, and I didn’t want to hit Miss Musselwhite by mistake. Instead my muscles tensed, telling me to move, but it all happened so fast I hadn’t the slightest chance of doing so.
The gunshot reverberated through the air, a hammer strike to my senses. But when I expected to be hit, nothing happened. I exhaled a strangled breath, surprised to see it was Scott who was shot, and Miss Musselwhite with him. Not me.
“Sniper,” one of the men shouted, and we all dove for the ground.
Renewed alarm surged through my veins. The closest source of cover for me was the barn, so I scrambled forward as fast as I could and crouched on my knees beside where Miss Musselwhite had fallen. One swift glance at Scott showed me he was dead—shot through the heart via Miss Musselwhite’s shoulder.
I dragged her deeper into the shelter created by the open barn door. It wasn’t the most ideal of covers, but it would have to serve. In any case, the sniper seemed to be finished, for no other shots had been fired, and there had been time to pick off a few more targets.
Untying the apron around Miss Musselwhite’s waist, I tore it down the middle and rolled both sides into a pad, positioning one against her wound at the back and pressing the other to her wound in her shoulder, and applied pressure. She was breathing heavily, her eyes wide with pain and terror.
“Try to relax,” I told her. “And don’t move.”
I turned to look about me, seeing that Alec had ventured out from the shrub where he’d dived for cover. When his body remained unmolested, the others began creeping out, one by one.
“Who was that?” Max demanded as he emerged from his hiding place behind the large wheel of an old tractor.
“Lieutenant Smith?” Sidney hazarded to guess, and I had to concede it was also the only suggestion I had. If Willoughby had been the pilot of that aeroplane, it couldn’t have been him. Though why Smith had saved me, why he had killed Scott, I couldn’t answer. Unless it was simply Ardmore’s orders.
I pushed the troubling thought away, as well as the certain knowledge I had just dodged death that day by the slimmest of margins.
“Is Scott dead?” Sidney asked as he approached, leaving Alec and Max to guard the others.
“Yes.”
Sidney let out a low whistle as he stood over the body, examining the wound. “Clean shot, too.” He considered the shed over his shoulder, which stood some one hundred yards away at an angle to the barn. “And from a considerable distance.”
I followed his gaze. “Is that where he shot from?”
“That’s my best guess.”
“Is he still there?”
As if in answer to this, we heard the sound of a motorbike revving and then a moment later saw it speeding off toward the airfield, a plume of dust rising up behind him.
“Should we go after him?” I queried.
Sidney didn’t answer. Perhaps because the answer was obvious. We would never catch up with him now. And in any case, he’d very likely saved my life.
My husband knelt down beside Scott, swiping a hand over his vacant eyes to close them, and then entered the barn. A moment later, he returned with a coarse cloth and draped it over Scott’s head and torso.
I studied Miss Musselwhite’s face. Her eyes were closed and her facial muscles twitched as if she was fighting to retain any semblance of composure. “Someone has to go for help,” I said.
“Ryde,” Sidney called. “Take the Pierce-Arrow across to the airfield. Tell them there’s been an incident and a woman has been shot. With your title and credentials they should hop to it.”
Max conferred briefly with Alec, who had Scott’s two cohorts seated on the ground with their backs against a tree trunk, and then raced off toward the motorcar.
“Oh, and tell them to send for Chief Inspector Thoreau at the Hungerford Constabulary,” Sidney shouted after him. Max waved his hand, indicating he’d heard, and then slid behind the driving wheel. I wondered precisely how he was going to explain the situation to them, but then decided to leave the matter in his capable hands. We had more pressing concerns.
Miss Musselwhite lay still, the grooves across her forehead etched with discomfort.
“They ambushed you on the way to Hungerford,” I said.
She blinked open her eyes, and it took a moment for them to focus on me. “Yes.” She licked her lips. “Knocked me off my bicycle.”
“You were going to see your sister. Because you realized we knew.”
She inhaled a deeper breath, blanching at the pain.
I adjusted my hands, maintaining pressure on Miss Musselwhite’s wound. Judging from its location in her right shoulder, I didn’t believe she was in critical danger from anything more than too much blood loss. But she didn’t seem to be aware of that.
“I want to confess,” she gasped. “I want to tell you what happened.”
Although I could have remained silent, could have let her pour out her confession believing this might be her last chance, my conscience compelled me to be honest. “You will almost certainly survive this.”
Her eyes trailed over my features. “Still. I want to explain.”
I nodded. “Go ahead.”
She seemed to struggle with where to begin. “I . . . I . . . I killed Minnie.” She heaved an agonized breath at the confession, tears filling her eyes. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”
“What happened?”
She swallowed. “I lied about taking the cold remedy that morning. I was lying in bed, trying to sleep, but I kept hearing Minnie moving around. I did my best to ignore her, until I heard her in the chamber below. Where your aunt is currently sleeping.”
“So you went to investigate.”
“And found her trying to break into her jewelry case.” Her eyes blazed with anger. “I realized she was the thief who’d been stealing the other items abo
ut the house, and confronted her. She tried to deny it, but the proof was there in her bag. Then . . . then she turned nasty. Accused me of having an affair with my brother-in-law. Which wasn’t true! We only talked. But she said she’d tell my sister so anyway.”
“I bet that made you angry.”
“Yes, but not angry enough to kill her. She . . . she pushed me and I fell into the bed frame, and then she grabbed her bag and ran out of the house. I chased after her and caught up with her in the west garden. We . . . we tussled and some of the items fell out of her bag. I snatched up the letter opener. I just meant to threaten her with it. But she charged at me, and . . .”
“Impaled herself,” I finished for her.
She nodded weakly. “Yes.”
“Did Mr. Green see?”
“No, but he came upon us shortly after. I didn’t know what to do.” Her voice broke in remembered panic. “He told me to pack up her belongings and hide them where no one would find them. Then he tucked a few of the trinkets she’d stolen in her skirts and told me he’d take care of the body while I straightened up inside. He said no one would miss her. That they’d all believe she’d run off to London—she talked about it often enough. And he was right.”
“Until the erosions from the recent heavy rains uncovered the body.”
Her mouth pulled downward at the corners. “It wasn’t just the rains.”
“Captain Willoughby?”
She nodded. “Somehow he knew about the body and he told me he would tell the authorities what he knew if I didn’t find something for him.”
“The package Mr. Green found.”
Her eyes widened at the discovery I already knew about it. “Yes.”
I shifted my arms again, the muscles growing tired.
Sidney knelt beside me. “Here, let me take a turn.”
I willingly gave the duty over to him, knowing his arm strength was greater than mine. Shaking my arms to relieve some of the tension, I leaned closer to examine the cut I’d noticed above her eye. “Tell me about Mr. Green. What did he tell you about the package?” In beginning with a relatively innocuous topic, I hoped we might be able to work our way around to the more troubling one.
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