Peril at Owl Park

by Marthe Jocelyn

  “Fortunately, I am hard of hearing,” said Lady Greyson, “and am not compelled to listen.” She closed her eyes and tipped her face upward, as if an invisible thread joined the end of her nose to a point among the plaster roses on the ceiling. I thought she might have fallen instantly asleep, but then, “The ballroom has much better acoustics for listening to music,” she said. “I danced there on my wedding night and on many a night after.”

  “Oh!” I was startled by the sweetness of her recollection. “Did James’s father like to dance?”

  “He was the best partner I ever knew,” she said. “Any woman he danced with became the belle of the ball.” Her eyes were still closed and this time I think she floated away.

  Evelyn arrived to escort Lady Greyson, just as my grandmother appeared beside me.

  “I should very much like to see whether the pirates might perform an encore while wielding their cutlasses,” said Grannie Jane, in a low voice. “But James tells me that for decency’s sake, I must retire with my hostess.” She followed Lady Greyson toward East House.

  And there I was, free to roam the party!

  Mr. Mooney, like the other actors, was still in his Long John Silver garb, but now had two legs and two boots instead of the peg he’d had strapped on during the Treasure Island tableau. He had replaced Mr. Corker next to Annabelle on the piano bench, and whispered into her ear. She began at once to play a different tune, one that he played with her, commanding more attention from the room—especially when the pianists finished with a finger-flying flourish. Lots of jolly applause after that.

  “Mrs. Sivam,” said Mr. Mooney. “Would you care to sing? I remember that you had a voice like an—”

  “Do not say an angel,” said Mrs. Sivam, laughing. “Four years have passed since I sang for an audience. I’m an old married woman now. Only my husband hears me sing.” She slipped from the room before the invitation could come again.

  Mr. Mooney and Miss Day commenced another song, a little noisier this time. Marjorie’s worried look and James’s lifted eyebrow told me that it was not the sort of song usually heard in the drawing room of Owl Park. James leaned in to say something and Miss Day’s next offering was a gentle nocturne by Chopin. My dance teacher at home had arranged this very music to accompany a performance of girls swaying like trees. Marjorie looked much relieved as she circulated, servant for the evening, with fresh champagne and plates of mushroom caps stuffed with crab meat. I ate four.

  Mrs. Sivam was back, holding her husband’s cherished wooden box above her head.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “I want to thank you for your patience with the ruckus early this morning. You deserve to know the reason behind it.”

  “Kitty!”

  “My husband may be a bit miffed,” she said, with a sly smile at Mr. Sivam, “but I’d like to give you all a glimpse of our remarkable treasure.”

  Mr. Sivam reached for her arm, but she laughed as if they were playing a chasing game and twirled away. He pulled back his hand as if scalded and put it into the pocket of his jacket. She was teasing him, but it seemed to take some effort for his smile to appear.

  Kitty opened the box and took out a small bag made of pale green silk. She passed the box to the nearest person, Mr. Mooney, so that her own hands might be free. We all drew closer, as if the bag held a powerful magnet rather than a gemstone.

  “I would ask you again,” said Lakshay Sivam, “not to—”

  Kitty rolled the Echo Emerald out of its nest and held it above her head, green and glinting, the size of a peach stone. She turned it this way and that, catching light from every lamp and candle in the room. I was not the only one to gasp at the shining glory of a single stone.

  “You’ve had your fun, Kitty,” said Mr. Sivam, quietly. “Time to put it safely away.” He held out his hand, waiting for her to drop the emerald on his palm.

  “How can such a beautiful thing carry a curse?” said Kitty, still holding it high. A murmur rustled through the room, like a breeze that promised rain. I saw Marjorie look imploringly at James.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Sivam,” said James, “for a glimpse of your astonishing jewel. Now, please, I beg you…” He was using a jolly voice, but he meant to aid Mr. Sivam’s wishes. “I beg you to withdraw temptation from our sight and lock up the Echo Emerald for the safety of us all.”

  The company laughed nervously, while Kitty obediently replaced the gem into the silk bag, pulled tight the drawstring and gave it to her husband. Mr. Sivam closed the box lid and bowed to the assembled company before taking his treasure upstairs. More champagne was poured, and Miss Day began to play a soothing song on the piano. James invited Marjorie to dance, and Mr. Mooney offered his hand to Kitty Sivam.

  The day had started before the sun came up and now it was very late on Christmas Eve. Hector and I must have climbed all those stairs to the nursery, but how? I tried not to think greedily about my stocking from Father Christmas or the packages that might be waiting, or about the heaps of taffy and truffles to be eaten. Indeed, I had no time to think of anything, for I was asleep before I’d closed my eyes.

  DECEMBER 25, CHRISTMAS DAY, 1902

  THURSDAY

  CHAPTER 10

  A TREASURE HUNT

  DOT MANEUVERED THE breakfast tray through the nursery door and placed it carefully on the table without so much as a bun rolling off.

  “Happy Christmas.” She bobbed her head. “Master Hector is waiting ever so patiently, and you’re still lying in your beds!”

  “Happy Christmas, Dot!”

  We pulled on dressing gowns and gave Hector the task of pouring our cocoa. We merrily peeled boiled eggs, spread butter on warm buns and sipped the steaming chocolate. Lucy scalded her tongue by gulping instead of sipping. I blew gently on mine, ruffling the milky skin across its surface.

  Hector lifted a linen napkin to pat the corners of his mouth, and Lucy let out a little squeak.

  “Look!” She reached for the small roll of red paper tied with a gilt ribbon tucked discreetly under a plate.

  Dot stopped her from snatching it up. “Lady Marjorie asked me to remind you, Miss Lucy, that the guest should open the first clue.”

  “There are two guests,” said Lucy. “Not fair to choose between them.”

  “Clue to what?” I said.

  “The treasure hunt, silly!” Lucy looked back and forth between Hector and me. “You truly don’t know? On Christmas morning we always have a hunt at Owl Park to find our stockings full of presents.”

  She reached for the pretty packet.

  “Him what’s not family.” Dot tilted her head toward Hector. “Him’s the guest,” she said.

  Lucy sighed and nudged the clue toward Hector.

  “Go on then.”

  Hector’s mouth was full of bun. He finished chewing, wiped the butter from his fingers and untied the ribbon on the miniature scroll.

  “Who makes the treasure hunt?” I asked.

  “Uncle James, and now Aunt Marjorie too, I should think. What does it say?”

  Hector unfurled the paper and read aloud.

  I sit with many cousins

  Near a cooking fire.

  If you call me clean,

  I could name you a liar!

  Hector said, “A cooking fire suggests—”

  “The kitchen!” said Lucy, hopping up from the table.

  “But the breakfast!” said Hector. “I am wishing to enjoy a second bun.”

  “Bring it with you,” said Lucy, scooping one up for herself. “Where are my slippers?”

  Infected by her eagerness, we were quickly ready.

  “Back stairs!” cried Lucy, leading us to the narrow steps normally used only by the women servants. There were two servants’ staircases in the main house, she said. Women used the wooden ones and men used the marble, because mar
ble could withstand the bumps of hauling people’s luggage up and down.

  “Come on!”

  “Hector?”

  He was behind us, still on the landing.

  “It is unpleasant to consider,” he said, “what is not clean in a kitchen.”

  The kitchen rooms were abuzz, even so early on Christmas morning. It seemed that twenty people had urgent tasks. Peeling turnips, plucking geese, chopping celery and dried apples, stirring oxtail soup, shelling walnuts, polishing spoons, scrubbing pots for further duty…

  I supposed Cook knew about the treasure hunt tradition. She was very patient with us poking about her kitchen looking for clues. The servants bustled around us, politely pretending we weren’t obstacles while they prepared for the big day ahead.

  “Near the cooking fire,” said Hector.

  We stood in a row, staring at an enormous side of lamb, roasting evenly as Stephen turned a handle on the spit. The aroma! The crackling fat!

  “Many dirty cousins,” I said. My eyes and Hector’s landed on the coal scuttle at the same instant. Lucy dove to dig through it, blacking her hands, until she pulled out the next clue. She wiped her fingers on her dressing gown, leaving sooty smears down the front.

  In a giant volume,

  More than one letter C

  Will be on the page

  Where you want to be!

  “Giant volume?” said Lucy.

  “Dictionary!” I said.

  “Library,” said Hector.

  And we were off.

  We passed James, who was wearing a bright red cardigan.

  “Good morning, Lord Greyson,” said Hector.

  “Merry Christmas, James!” I called.

  “We’re following the second clue already!” Lucy boasted.

  “Well done,” said James. “I expect you’ll be dragging your socks into breakfast before I’ve finished my second cup of coffee.” He gave us a cheery wave and disappeared into the breakfast room.

  Lucy was first into the dark, chilly library, because she was always first, it seemed. The drawn curtains showed a sliver of morning between them. One lamp burned on a small table beside a tall-backed chair. The library was rarely used before noon, so the fire was not yet lit. I followed Lucy, with Hector on my heels. Quite actually on my heels, for his toe caught my slipper and pulled it partway off. I stumbled, knocking Lucy forward. She gasped and fell—or, possibly, she fell and then gasped.

  “It’s wet,” she said. “Something has spilled.”

  Hector moved to the window and drew open one of the heavy damask drapes. Lucy held up her hands, eyes as round as pennies. Her palms were covered in blood.

  CHAPTER 11

  A POOL OF BLOOD

  LUCY’S MOUTH FELL open and stayed that way.

  “Ooh la la,” murmured Hector.

  The slash of light now pouring through the window illuminated a body lying facedown on the floor. A man wearing the loose white shirt, rough jerkin, and dark orange britches of a pirate. Bulges of bare skin showed through holes in his striped socks. More impressive was the dagger standing straight up from the middle of his back, its bronze handle gleaming faintly. A prickle started in the same place on my own back, creeping up to my neck and ears.

  “Who is it?” Lucy whispered. His face was covered by a matted wig, and his hat sat crookedly, so we could not see at once who had met this dreadful end. I thought of Irma Eversham under the piano in the Mermaid Dance Room, of her blue face and floppy feet.

  “So many similar pirates,” said Hector. “Which one is it?”

  “Not James, thank goodness,” I said. James was calmly eating toast in the breakfast room, wearing his cheery cardigan.

  “The footman?” said Hector. “The actor?”

  “Mr. Sivam is a different color,” said Lucy.

  “I hope it’s not Frederick,” I said. “Think of poor Dot.”

  “Frederick is skinnier, don’t you think?” said Lucy.

  “Mr. Corker, then,” said Hector. “The logical deduction.”

  “The carpet is soggy,” said Lucy. She was now vigorously rubbing the blood off her hands, adding scarlet streaks to the coal dust on the front of her robe.

  “As well as our slippers,” I said.

  Lucy made an odd little jump, as if she could escape her own toes.

  “I don’t suppose there’s a chance he might still be alive?” I said.

  Hector crouched and poked a finger through the curls of the wig, to touch the man’s neck.

  “Not a bit warm,” he said. “He is most certainly dead.”

  “He’s pretty whiffy,” Lucy whispered. And it was true. Mingled awful smells that I didn’t recognize, and one that I did, an alcoholic drink.

  “Why do you suppose his pockets are pulled out?” I said.

  Lucy made a noise that might be a whimper. “I wish my mother were here,” she said.

  I was ever so grateful that my mother was not. She would be dismayed beyond words.

  “We should call for Uncle James,” said Lucy.

  “Wait,” I said. “Wait just one little minute, please.” I wanted desperately to think, to carefully look at the scene before us.

  “Grandmamma will be ever so troubled,” Lucy said. “Must it be me to tell her?”

  “James will,” I said. I thought of my own grandmother. She would be decidedly enthralled by the arrival of a corpse.

  “The police will come,” said Hector. “I should not have touched the drapery. Even the Dowager Lady Greyson cannot stop the police when a body bleeds in the library.”

  The police! Most certainly they’d be here. The room would be swarmed in no time!

  “This is our only chance,” I said, “to be in here alone.” I gazed at the body, at the bloodstain, and then, in wider and wider circles, at everything else in sight, trying to memorize exactly what sat where. When I’d found the deceased Irma Eversham in October, Inspector Locke said that I was an excellent witness. I wished to honor my reputation.

  The dictionary that had brought us here stood open, upon a pedestal. Next to it was a globe of the world on a cast-iron stand with pale azure oceans and sand-colored continents. Bookcases lined the walls, showing hundreds of leather spines in orderly rows. A green-shaded lamp on a little table illuminated the silver rim of a magnifying glass. A desk of polished wood near the window had a stack of writing paper and a tray of implements—the ones with silver owls that Marjorie had mentioned. Further off was a pair of armchairs with another small table between them. The lamp there was unlit, but a cut-crystal glass holding amber liquid glimmered faintly. A pair of high buckled boots lay nearby.

  Aside from the boots and the dead body, nothing was apparently amiss. The library was calm and tidy, awaiting only a reader. Except that Lucy seemed to be huffing noisy breaths beside me, each one huffier than the one before. Her cheeks were pale, her mouth open.

  “Lucy?” I said.

  She squeezed shut her eyes and began to scream. A long, admirable scream.

  My eyes met Hector’s. “That should do it,” I said.

  “Most emphatically,” said Hector.

  The noise stopped when Lucy paused for breath. “Sorry,” she gulped. “It just came over me.”

  Footsteps thudded in the passage, like heartbeats in the hush of the pirate’s tomb. The housekeeper, Mrs. Frost, threw open the door, her cheeks mottled red. Archer, head parlormaid, was a step behind. She took one look and set to screaming herself.

  Mrs. Frost smacked Archer’s face with a swift slap. “Pull yourself together. Find Dr. Musselman. Tell him to come at once.”

  Archer slouched away, holding a hand to her face.

  Pressman appeared just as James strode through a second door on the far side of the room. The butler clasped a poker borrowed from the kitchen fire. James w
as equipped with an enormous pistol, though it looked old and blackened.

  “There is no one to shoot,” I said. “He’s already dead.”

  Marjorie came a moment later, and froze in the doorway, aghast. Her gaze flew from the corpse to me, to James and back to the body on the floor. Pressman pulled open more draperies until Hector spoke up.

  “Perhaps not to disarrange the room?” he said.

  “Quite right,” said James. “Don’t touch anything else, Pressman. Though the light helps.”

  “So much blood,” said Marjorie.

  “So much blood,” I repeated. Now that the scarlet marsh upon the carpet was brightly illuminated, I felt a bit of a whoosh, as if someone had blown very hard against the inside of my face.

  “I can’t promise we’ll get that stain out, my lady,” said Mrs. Frost, frowning.

  “But who is it?” said Marjorie.

  James put aside his weapon and stepped gingerly along the fringe of the carpet.

  “It’s hard to see,” I said. “Because of the wig.”

  James leaned closer. “I suppose we’d best wait for the doctor, but if there’s any chance…”

  “Hector touched him,” said Lucy.

  “He is dead,” said Hector.

  “Marjorie, darling?” said James. “Do you feel up to placing a telephone call to the police?”

  “Certainly,” she said. “I’ll go at once.” She looked at me. “Perhaps you should come too. Mummy would be vexed to think I’d left you in the company of a—”

  “I’ll look after the children,” said James. “The call is urgent.”

  Thank goodness Marjorie did not argue but hurried away, nearly colliding with Mr. Mooney as he came in.

  “What’s this?” The actor’s eyes bulged at the grim sight while two footmen tried to peer over his shoulder. “Is that one of our daggers?”

  “Please may we stay, James?” I said. “It’s not my first dead body.”

  He put an arm about my shoulder. “You do realize that’s not a normal thing for a young lady to claim? And what about you, Lucy?” he said. “Are you quite recovered after your alarming scream?”