I was breathing hard, more from fear than from the run. I quieted my breath and went on at a quick walk. The turf felt cool and soft through my nylon footies. When I reached the end of the ride I was still at some distance from Hambly and directly behind it. Ann and I had not circled the place completely. I wished we had. I wished I knew exactly what Faisel and Smith were up to. It gave me satisfaction to name them in my mind--even if the names were faked.
Lights showed in the new wing, in one corner of the second floor. Family apartments. The ground floor showed only dim illumination and most of the drapes had been pulled. There were no lights in the central portion at all, but the Institute wing was patchily lit on the second and third floors. Milos was probably housed there.
I had taken a few steps in the direction of the older wing of the house when the heavier man, the Libyan, emerged from that direction and began to walk up the long rolled lawn toward me.
Chapter 16.
Faisel was walking straight toward me across the quarter mile expanse of lawn that separated the house from the ride. I leapt into the shadow of the trees and froze in place. He was carrying something in his right hand, a gun or a knife, that glinted in the moonlight.
I felt like a deer caught in the scope of a rifle. He kept coming. When he was about a hundred yards away he glanced over his left shoulder toward Hambly. I was on his right. I took two cat steps back and tried to look like one of the flowering shrubs at the edge of the ride. His head whipped forward, and he kept coming, trotting now, gun-hand at his side, eyes scanning ahead of him. If I had twitched an eyebrow he would have seen me.
He looked over his shoulder again, a long look, as if he were expecting to see or hear something from the direction of the house. I took three desperate sideways steps and gained the protection of a rhododendron. It had large, pale blossoms with velvety dark hearts. I held very still. Then he was past me, and I could breathe.
I counted to twenty very slowly, one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand... Then I turned my head with exquisite care in his direction. He was trotting along at a good clip, almost running. I waited until he was a blob in the shadowy distance. Then I did what I probably should have done as soon as I sighted the house. I ran to the new wing, found the entrance, raced up to the door, and began pounding on it.
I was yelling nonsense--help, fire, murder. Open up, come on, you limey bastards. I pounded on the stout door with both fists, bashed the iron knocker, leaned on the bell when I spotted it, all the while shouting at the top of my lungs.
I kept glancing back toward the ride. Surely Faisel could hear me, even at that distance. I didn't see him returning, though. I pounded and yelled.
Light illuminated the narrow windows on both sides of the door and the fan-shaped arch above. I kept pounding.
When the door opened I almost fell into the arms of a stout man with glasses.
"Here, what is it? What's the matter?"
"You have intruders," I panted.
He raised both eyebrows. "I certainly see one intruder."
I gulped for air. "You have a man here, a Czech named Milos Vlaçek. Two men are on the grounds. They're going to try to kill him."
He stared at me for a blank minute in which I came close to despair. Maybe the people in the family wing didn't know about Milos. Maybe the man would think I was crazy. Then he wheeled without a word, trotted to a small alcove down the hallway, picked up a telephone, and punched a number.
"Yes. Williams here. Someone has broken into the grounds and is after your friend. Move him to the family wing now. Hurry."
He slammed down the phone and turned back to me. "Stay where you are." He punched out another number. After a pause that may have lasted three rings, he said, "Williams here. There are apparently intruders near the house. Where's McHale? He what? Well, find him."
I listened to him and stayed where I was, but I was dancing with impatience. I stared off into the dark, trying to see whether Faisel was returning, whether Smith had heard me yell.
The man who had identified himself as Williams turned back and advanced toward me. His teeth bared in a smile, and his eyeglasses glinted. "Now, madam, whoever you are, I should like an explanation..."
I squinted into the darkness. "Look out. There he goes." It was Smith, and he was running hell-for-leather toward the ride. I had tensed to move when a tremendous explosion knocked me off my feet. Glass shattered outward on both sides of me.
I scrambled up. I must have been yelling as I ran, something about not letting the bastards get away with it, but I didn't hear myself because the noise of the blast had deafened me. I ran desperately, flat out, in my ladylike nylon footies.
I ran up the long slope of lawn and onto the ride. Smith had probably been knocked down, too, and he ran like an amateur, arms flailing, feet flopping. I caught up with him about a third of the way along the ride. In the last couple of yards he may have sensed me coming, though I think we were both still deaf, for he started to turn and stumbled to one knee. His face was a white blur. He regained his feet and had turned to face me, knife in hand, when I slammed into him. I knocked him flat.
A fire burned in my head, fueled by adrenaline and rage, so I suppose we were equally matched. I was taller by a couple of inches, and he outweighed me. He was a street fighter, I was an athlete. I had knocked the wind out of him, but he had the knife. We grappled.
At the edge of my consciousness, I was aware of the turmoil behind me. I paid no heed. I was wrestling with Smith, still atop him. I clamped the wrist of his right hand in my left, digging my fingernails in, but though I had a fistful of his hair and was smashing his head on the ground, he kept his grip on the knife. He gasped for air. His body heaved and jerked. He pounded and tore at me with his left hand, trying to overturn me.
I knew at some dim level that if he reversed our positions and pinned me I was dead meat, so I kept low to the ground and dug my knees into the springy sod on either side of his waist. My hearing returned, and there were noises. Shouts, dogs barking, a woman screaming, rumbles and crashes from the damaged house. Somewhere an engine started and, very far away, the klaxons of emergency vehicles from the direction of Ludlow and Much Aston ripped at the night.
Lord Henning's beagles found us as Smith's heels finally dug in. He arched his back, twisted viciously, and rolled me over.
He was screaming obscenities. The circling dogs ki-yied. He wrenched his knife hand from my grip as I clawed at his eyes. The knife plunged downward, and I felt burning pain, but I found his throat with both hands, and I kneed upward. He let out a squawk and raised the knife again. As I blacked out I heard heavy masculine voices above the shrill yelping of the dogs.
I have been told that I came to in the ambulance and asked after Milos. What had fueled my berserk rage was the instant conviction that he had been killed in the blast.
Nobody answered me. The paramedics, and the constable who rode along in the ambulance, had not the faintest idea who I was, of course. They asked. Apparently I told them I was Lark Dailey and that I had a room at the Greyhound in Much Aston. Then I passed out again. They radioed that information to the county police, and a car was sent to the Greyhound where Ann was raising holy hell with the village constable. She set them straight about my name and what I was doing at Hambly. It was then about eleven, and Jay and my father had still not arrived.
At the Ludlow hospital my injuries were assessed, I was given a transfusion, and the knife wounds to my shoulder and arm were stitched. I was wheeled into a recovery ward as ambulances began screaming in with other casualties from Hambly, including Mr. Smith. When Lord Henning's gamekeeper and groundsman took him into custody, Smith was howling with pain because my knee had found its target. He was also considerably bruised about the head and body, his right wrist was torn and swollen, and he had lost a handful of hair. They patched him up and hauled him off to the pokey under heavy police guard.
I knew none of this at the time. I had been sedated to prevent m
e from thrashing about and pulling out stitches, so I slept until six o'clock the next morning and woke to find Ann at my bedside.
"Where's Jay?" I demanded--or rather that was my intention. What came out was a blurred moan.
Ann rang for the ward sister and took my right hand.
"Where's Jay?" This time the words came out, but I was feeling a lot of pain, so I gave another loud groan.
The nurse bustled in. "Are we awake then?"
Ann ignored her. "Jay's just down the hall drinking a cup of coffee, honey, and your daddy's here, too. I'll go get them." She gave my hand a squeeze and vanished.
Sister Owens introduced herself briskly and set about checking my vital signs. I am afraid I moaned and groaned a lot. She gave me two capsules, levering me up and holding a glass of water for me. I groaned again as she eased me back against the pillows, and at that heart-rending moment Jay and my father appeared in my field of vision.
"Wow, you made it," I moaned. "Where were you?"
Jay was at my side. He bent and kissed me on the mouth.
Since my mouth was about the only portion of my anatomy that didn't hurt, I returned the kiss with interest and groaned some more. I am not stoical by nature.
Jay kept his hold on my hand but edged aside to let my father approach. Dad looked exhausted.
I met his eyes. "Am I good?" This inane question was childhood code. When I was about three I had asked it after being scolded roundly for some misbehavior. My father's proper answer should have been "Thee is good," a gentle allusion to his own background and an infinitely reassuring bit of ritual.
This time Dad sighed. "Thee is alive, daughter."
I shut my eyes as tears welled. I could tell that George Fox Dailey and I were due for a long philosophical discussion.
My father is not a Friend, though he was raised in a traditional Quaker household, but he does not believe in using force, except when one is in dire and immediate danger of losing one's own life or the life of a child. He must have known by then that my attack on Smith was entirely voluntary.
Jay said, "It's all right, George. Leave me with her until the pain pills start working." When I opened my eyes Dad had left the room. So had the nurse and Ann. Jay held my hand.
He told me he loved me, and I said me, too. The pain pills were beginning to take effect. I lay with my hand in his warm grasp and felt my aches ease. My mind was a sluggish pond. Things moved below the surface. One of the nicest things about Jay is that he knows when to keep still.
After a considerable silence, I said sleepily, "I was so worried about you, driving on the wrong side of the road all that way. What took you so long?"
He cleared his throat. "It's a complicated story, darling, and I'm not going to tell it now."
I roused momentarily. "The papers..."
"George brought them. We'll talk about that later, too."
"Milos is dead." I began to cry.
"Hey, no. Who told you that? He's right here in this hospital."
"Really?"
"Yes. I guarantee it."
"Mmm. Tell Ann." If Jay said a thing was so, it was so. I was smiling when I fell asleep again. At least something good had come out of my foolish derring-do.
I woke at noon, and the pain was awful but no longer mind-numbing. When the pain pill--not a sedative, this time--started working, I became conscious of hunger. Jay said later that I gave an excellent imitation of the voracious plant in Little Shop of Horrors--"Feed me!"
At one, the proper feeding time, I was brought a bowl of cream of celery soup and a fish paste sandwich. I ate both without blenching.
A polite detective from the Shropshire force questioned me after lunch. He told me Ann had explained a great deal already and that he wouldn't tire me by going into my reasons for coming to Shropshire. I gave him as straightforward an account of the events at Hambly as I could. His sergeant took my statement down and read it back to me. Then the detective thanked me and left. Sister Owens was scowling the whole time from the doorway. She was very protective of me. Ann, Jay, and Dad had not yet returned from lunch.
My head was quite clear. I wanted out of the hospital, and I wanted the answers to some questions--lots of questions. My aversion to the hospital had something to do with the food and a lot to do with my desire for privacy. I needed to talk with Jay, Dad, and Ann. I needed to know a lot of things, and I didn't want to worry that some stranger was listening. My medical care, then and later, when I was an out-patient, was a tribute to the National Health, but I did want out of that hospital.
I raised such a ruckus they let me go.
Jay drove me back to the Greyhound in the Fiat he had rented at Heathrow while Dad and Ann took the Escort. The police had retrieved it, along with my untouched purse, and towed the sedan. Jay told me Lord Henning's dogs had treed Faisel in the evergreen copse. The Libyan was too heavy and too out of shape to scale the wall without the rope ladder, and I had left the ladder on the wrong side of the wall. He shot two of the dogs before one of them crunched his gun hand. I wondered how the tabloid press was going to deal with a genuine dog killer.
As we drove along the familiar road to Much Aston, Jay also told me about the effects of the explosion. The chief constable of Shropshire had phoned the hospital. He told Jay they thought the explosive was a substance manufactured in Czechoslovakia. The police, including Inspector Thorne, who was in contact with the Shropshire force, believed that the plot against Milos originated in Prague, despite Faisel's Libyan passport.
Smith had placed the plastic explosive on a second floor ledge, carrying it up in a common nylon knapsack. It was on that floor--the third storey, in American terms--that Milos had been hidden, guarded by an attendant nurse.
Smith had probably used an egg-timer wired to a detonator to give himself time to escape. Perhaps climbing back down and rounding the house had taken longer than he anticipated, or perhaps the detonator had malfunctioned and gone off early. I remembered Faisel looking back at Hambly as he trotted along the ride. He was probably expecting Smith to join him before the blast went off. Further testing would go on for some weeks, but those were the preliminary findings.
"Smith must be a man of all work." I leaned my head back on the headrest and closed my eyes. "Have they charged him?"
Jay's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "With two counts of murder and one of attempted murder. So far."
"Two counts of murder?"
"Miss Beale's and Lord Henning's watchman, a man named Angus McHale. They found his body and his dog's in the brush near that whatchacallum, the ride. Apparently the dog sensed the two men approaching, and McHale went to investigate. The dog was shot, but McHale was knifed."
I fought a gagging sensation. "That's horrible." I swallowed hard. "But surely a gunshot..."
"Faisel--that's not his real name, by the way--used a silencer." Jay slowed behind a lorry that was laboring up a small hill. After a moment, he added, "There will be other attempted murder charges. When the blast came, Milos and his attendant had already reached a corridor that leads across the central section of Hambly to the family's quarters. The attendant was pushing Milos's chair. Both of them were thrown to the far end of the corridor and trapped in the debris. A section of the roof fell in on them. It took the fire department two hours to pry them loose."
"But Milos, is he all right?"
"He's bruised, and there was some internal bleeding from the earlier wound, but he's doing very well, Lark. Ann saw him yesterday and said he was in good spirits. The attendant, a young woman named Flynn, was struck by a beam. She has a skull fracture and several broken bones in her shoulder, but they think she'll recover."
"What about the family?"
His voice lightened. "They're in the Canary Islands."
"What?"
"It seems they take off for a little vacation in the sun every year at this time."
"While the house is being shown?"
"Yes. I imagine it would be uncomfortable having strang
ers poking around your living room."
I thought of the ornate public rooms of Hambly and smiled at his word choice, but the vision of what had been destroyed appalled me. All that silk and silver, the ancient musical instruments, the Heppelwhite furniture, family portraits by artists like Reynolds and Sargent and Augustus John. "Was there a fire?"
"A couple of small ones started in the remains of the Institute wing. They were put out quickly. There was heavy damage to the public rooms, but it's a well-built house. The family wing lost its windows. Williams told me they think the central portion can be salvaged and that the damage to the family wing isn't structural. The Institute wing will probably be pulled down."
"Williams. He was the one who opened the door. Who is he, the butler?"
Jay smiled. "He's Lord Henning's political secretary. He was in the library working on a speech for Henning to deliver in the House of Lords."
"Heavens. And he was all right?"
"A few cuts and bruises. He said to tell you his glasses flew off and were smashed in the explosion, or he would have run to your aid. He did tell the people who found you which way you'd gone, though."
"It's a good thing they showed up when they did."
"Yes."
I shot him a glance. His mouth was set in a grim line.
"Hey, I survived."
"Yeah, and I am very carefully not yelling at you for taking off after an armed man."
"In my stocking feet." I felt a bubble of laughter welling up. I wondered what had become of my flats. My left shoulder was strapped up tight, and my arm was pinned in a state-of-the-art sling. Jay was going to be tying my sneakers for me for a while. I told him that, and his mouth eased in a reluctant grin.
I sobered as we drew alongside the section of wall I had scaled. "You said there were other casualties."
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