Soon, Cousin Clarabelle and Verna were doing likewise, while Hastings looked on and told them their efforts would yield them nothing. How was he so certain?
And yet, when a quarter of an hour had passed without results, Phoebe leaned with her hands on the rail of the billiard table. Hastings grinned at her. “I told you so.”
“I certainly didn’t think we’d find anything, either,” Cousin Clarabelle said. “Though I suppose it was worth checking, just to be sure.”
“To be sure Olive is guilty, you mean,” Verna added. She took hold of Hastings’s arm. “I’m hungry. Let’s stop this foolishness and go down.”
As the others made for the doorway, Phoebe hesitated. If she went down now, it would look entirely strange for her to suddenly plead a headache during dinner. Slipping a hand around her back, she flicked open a hook on the sash of her dress.
Julia stopped on the threshold. “Are you coming?”
“Oh, I . . . I must have caught my dress on something. I think it tore. I’ll just go change and be down in a few minutes.”
“Come here, I’ll check it for you.”
“No, that’s all right. I can feel it’s torn. You go down. I won’t be long.”
With a shrug, Julia turned away.
Phoebe waited until the last footsteps faded in the hall below, then sped into action.
* * *
The surface beneath Eva’s cheek shifted, spinning like a boat without a rudder on heaving seas. Her eyes were closed, the lids thick and heavy. She tried to blink them open but they resisted, as her hand resisted when she attempted to move it. Easier to fall back into oblivion . . .
No. She dragged in a breath, then another in an effort to steady herself and gather her strength. She blinked and this time forced her weighted eyelids to open sufficiently to let the light in, to let a field of gold fill her vision. What was it, gleaming in front of her like late afternoon sunlight, except without any semblance of warmth?
Not sunlight, for as her eyes remained open a pattern slowly took shape, a diamondlike design. She forced her cheek to lift from the woven rug beneath it, gritting her teeth against the dizziness, breathing through her nose, and leveraging her hands beneath her. A bed took shape beside her, draped in gold silk damask.
Miss Asquith’s bed, in the room in which Miss Asquith had been locked. Only she wasn’t here now, and the person locked in, Eva deduced, was herself. It took her some moments, leaning against the bed, her cheek now resting against the cool sheen of the silk, before snippets of what happened began to filter through her mind. Miss Asquith had been so calm, had dismissed Eva without so much as a blink.
I’d like to rest now . . .
Eva hadn’t realized what Miss Asquith had noticed right before she spoke those words. Nor did she notice that, as she approached the door, Miss Asquith bore down on her. How quiet she had been, a model of stealth. A resounding pain had seized the back of Eva’s head. Then . . . nothing, until just now.
Again, she drew in breath after deep breath, blowing them out slowly, letting everything inside her find its normal balance. She couldn’t rush it . . . except she must rush. Where had Miss Asquith gone? Where were Ladies Phoebe and Julia?
Were they in danger?
She closed her fists around the counterpane and dragged herself up along the side of the bed until she could place the flats of her hands on the mattress and push upright. Or nearly upright. The room turned, first one way, then the other, while a tiny drummer inside her skull kept an uneven rhythm. Eva breathed through it, dredging up the patience to wait rather than stumble blindly and risk passing out again.
There. Better. Her head ached but only vaguely. She planned her course. To the end of the bed, then across to the dresser, where she leaned a moment or two, her head down, until steadiness returned, however briefly. Releasing her hold on the beaded edge, she pushed away, moved her feet, and with outstretched arms found the door. Closed both hands around the knob. Tried to turn it.
She had been correct. Miss Asquith had found the key and locked her in. Try the speaking tube? By now, Lady Phoebe would have gone down to dinner, surely. They would all be downstairs now, and if they heard Eva pounding on the door, wouldn’t they dismiss it as Miss Asquith trying to gain their attention?
She had no choice, she must try. Every passing moment gave Miss Asquith that much more time to get away. She had to alert Miles.
“Help me,” she cried out and beat her fists against the door. “Someone let me out. Miss Asquith has escaped . . .”
* * *
Phoebe hurriedly changed into a fresh frock and hadn’t finished doing up the buttons in the back before she darted out of her room and across the corridor to Hastings and Verna’s suite. Before she could step inside, a pounding held her frozen.
Had she been caught? That made no sense, for if Hastings or Verna had returned upstairs, they would have called out to her, not pounded on the wall. Yet the clamor continued. Phoebe identified the source: Olive Asquith’s room. Phoebe closed the door of the suite and moved down the corridor.
“Olive?”
“Lady Phoebe? No, it’s me, Eva. I’m locked in. I . . .”
Phoebe jiggled the knob, but to no avail. “I can’t open it. Are you all right?”
“Yes, I . . . I’m fine. But Miss Asquith has escaped.” Even through the door, her voice sounded shaky, even frail.
“You’ve been in there all this time? Oh, Eva, what did she do to you? I should have searched for you. I’m so sorry—”
“Phoebe.” Eva’s voice came stronger, firmer. “Please check with Mrs. Dayton for extra keys. There are sure to be some somewhere. The housekeeper’s parlor or the butler’s pantry.”
“Yes, I’ll go now.” Phoebe started to hurry away, but Eva called her back.
“Telephone the chief inspector’s office first. He and Miles need to know that Miss Asquith has escaped.”
“Yes, all right.” She pressed her hand against the door, wishing she could see Eva, touch her, to reassure herself that her dear friend was truly all right. “I’ll be back soon.”
CHAPTER 16
As Phoebe reached the downstairs hall, the sounds of a motorcar pulling up to the house sent her detouring to the front door. She opened it without stopping to consider it might be someone other than the constable and earned a scowl from him as he climbed out of his sedan.
“I thought I gave orders that no one was to admit anyone without first checking to see who it was.”
“I’m sorry, Constable. But I guessed it was you.”
He climbed the two steps to the front door. “You knew no such thing, Lady Phoebe. That was reckless, especially since the Grekovs have not yet been found.”
Unable to argue his point, she changed the subject as she closed the door behind him. “It doesn’t matter. It is you, and Olive Asquith has escaped. She somehow overpowered Eva and locked her in her bedroom.”
“In Miss Asquith’s bedroom?” He had moved ahead of her into the hall. Now he swung back around, reaching out but not quite grasping her shoulders. He spoke with urgency. “How did this happen? Never mind. Is Eva hurt?”
“No. At least she said she wasn’t. But I’ve got to find an extra key to let her out. Go up to her, Constable, and I’ll come as soon as I can.”
He had already reached the first step as he said, “Hurry.”
Phoebe made her way past the dining room, keeping well away from the doorway to avoid anyone inside seeing her. She didn’t quite know why she chose furtiveness, but somehow it seemed the most prudent course, for now. Reaching the baize door, she pushed her way through and hurried down the staircase.
Myra Stanley occupied the first room she passed. With a sour cast to her face, the woman stood before an ironing board and hefted a non-electric iron over what looked like one of Julia’s shirtwaist blouses. She glanced up briefly at Phoebe but didn’t speak. Phoebe moved on, finding the cook and her assistant in the servants’ hall.
“Mrs.
Dayton, do you know where extra keys to the bedrooms might be?”
Both women came to their feet at the sound of her voice. Mrs. Dayton hastily wiped her napkin across her lips. “We haven’t had to use them, my lady, but I believe there are extra sets somewhere.”
“Yes, Mrs. Dayton, but where?”
“Hmm . . . Margaret, do you know?”
“I surely don’t, ma’am. It’s not my place to go looking for the extra keys.”
Her impatience rising, Phoebe about-faced and found her way to the housekeeper’s parlor. The room housed a wooden settee and a couple of chairs, a writing table, a small bookcase, and a cupboard. Phoebe went to the writing table first and pulled open the drawers. But for some scraps of paper and a few half-used pencils, they were empty. The cupboard came next. She hoped to find key hooks on the back of the door, but only unpainted wood met her scrutiny. The shelves inside didn’t yield anything, either. The bookcase? Nothing but a few tomes on housekeeping, a collection of cookbooks, and not much else of interest.
She sprinted to the end of the hall to the butler’s pantry. She had not entered this room before and found it soared two stories above her head, the first floor comprising glass-encased cupboards that wrapped around three walls, filled with china dinner service in various patterns. The cupboards above appeared mostly empty, the contents having been cleared out, ostensibly by the house’s previous owner. A dumbwaiter and a walk-in safe dominated the fourth wall. Beside them sat a rolltop desk.
Phoebe began searching the desk, opening drawer after drawer, her sense of futility rising. The rolltop loomed before her, but a tug confirmed what she had feared: It was locked.
“And where would the key to this be?”
She no longer cared. Doubling back to the kitchen, she scanned the equipment. Pots and pans, some copper, some steel, others of iron, hung from hooks above the center work table. She chose a cast iron skillet, lifted it from its hook, and returned to the butler’s pantry.
Unbidden, images of Ralph Cameron’s final moments flashed in her mind as she gripped the pan’s handle with two hands and raised the heavy object above her right shoulder as though it were a bat. Was this how the murderer raised the andiron before swinging it into poor Ralph’s head?
The thought and the accompanying image forced her eyes shut as she swung the pan and smashed it edgewise into the desk’s curving tambour. The wooden slats splintered against the weight of the cast iron. Opening her eyes, Phoebe set the pan aside and with her hands broke off the remaining wood and ripped aside the canvas of the rolltop.
“What on earth was that?” Mrs. Dayton scurried into the room with Margaret at her heels. “Lady Phoebe, what are you doing?”
Phoebe reached in, grinning. “Finding keys. The only question is, which are which?” She held several rings in each hand and appealed to Mrs. Dayton. “Any ideas?”
The woman shook her head. Behind her, Margaret did the same.
Myra Stanley appeared in the doorway. “What do you need the keys for, Lady Phoebe? Is it anything to do with Lady Julia?”
Once again, an inner caution advised Phoebe not to reveal the truth. “No, nothing to do with my sister.” She almost added the excuse that she had lost the key to her own room, but then remembered that she needn’t justify her actions at all. Despite her beliefs to the contrary, there were times the privileges of her station came in handy.
She tightened her fingers around the bundles of keys and headed for the door, prompting the other three women to step out of her way. Their curious stares followed her down the corridor.
She wasted no time in returning to the first floor, arriving in time to witness Constable Brannock, helmet and coat removed, heaving his shoulder against the door that separated him from Eva. Phoebe called to him.
“Constable, I’ve brought keys.” She held them out and hastened to him.
Quickly he retrieved his coat and shoved his arms into its sleeves. “Sorry to be out of uniform, Lady Phoebe . . .”
“Nonsense,” she replied. “I simply wouldn’t want you to break your shoulder. Here. The keys weren’t labeled. I can only assume the former butler knew one bunch from another, but I’m afraid we’ll have to try them until we find the right one.” She moved closer to the door. “Eva, are you all right in there?”
“Quite, my lady. Just eager to be out. I told Miles he should be searching for Miss Asquith, not worrying about me.”
“First things first,” he murmured, and snatched a random ring of keys from Phoebe. The first few he tried didn’t work, and he murmured again, this time incoherently beneath his breath. Meanwhile, Phoebe fell to studying the other sets of keys and devised a theory.
“Here, try these. They’re less worn than the others and must not be used as much. That to me suggests they could be the extras for the bedrooms, used only in emergencies.”
The constable hesitated a moment, surveying the keys she held out. With a nod he took them from her. On the third try, the latch clicked and the door opened. Eva stepped out into his arms.
* * *
Eva found herself crushed to Miles’s torso, her cheek nestled in his coat collar—infinitely smoother and more comforting than the rug on the floor had been. For several moments she relished his steadiness, a pillar of protection, and breathed in the deeply earthy scent of his shaving soap.
Something soft and moist grazed her forehead in the gentlest fashion. His lips. They nudged her face to his, until their brows met, and he traced tiny kisses down her nose until he found her mouth and prodded, tempted, and coaxed her response.
A quiet footfall penetrated the enfolding bliss, and Eva lifted her head suddenly. “Oh, my lady, forgive me . . .”
Lady Phoebe was already turning, backing away, but stopped. “No need. I’m just happy you’re free and not harmed worse than you were. You are all right, aren’t you? You didn’t just say that? What did Olive do to you?”
“Yes, what did she do?” Miles repeated, rather more fiercely.
Eva reached around to finger the back of her head. Through her hair, she found a lump that was tender to the touch. But her headache had subsided, and she judged herself to be sound enough. “Miss Asquith hit me with something, I don’t know what, but I promise you, I’m all right.”
They all peered into the bedroom. There, lying not far from where Eva had lain, a solid glass paperweight reflected the light from the desk lamp. Miles swore beneath his breath. His arms went around her again.
“Miles, I’m all right.” With a shift of her gaze she indicated Lady Phoebe.
“Don’t mind me,” her lady said. “I’ll just . . . actually, there is something I must do.” She started away along the corridor, increasing her pace as she went.
“Are you quite sure you’re all right?” Miles spoke no endearment, yet Eva almost could have sworn she heard one—are you all right, my darling—in his tender tone. He cupped her cheeks. “Perhaps we should get you to the doctor?”
She raised her own hands to his, pressing them where they framed her face. “I’m fine, Miles. You needn’t fuss.”
“Needn’t fuss? Needn’t fuss? The woman attacked you, Eva. She might have killed you.” His hands left her cheeks, and his arms again enfolded her.
“I’m sure she had no such intention. She merely wanted out of her confinement.”
He pulled away, holding her at arm’s length. “I don’t see how you can be so calm about it. But what exactly happened? I see the tray.” Eva looked over her shoulder to follow his gaze to where the dinner tray she had brought still sat on the dresser, the food untouched. “You brought her a tray, and when you turned to leave, she attacked?”
She turned back to him but was unable to meet his eye. “Yes, well, generally speaking.”
“What do you mean, ‘generally speaking’?” He tipped her chin upward. “Eva, what did you do?”
“I merely went in and talked to her a bit. And learned a great deal, I’ll have you know. She’s a socialist, or a com
munist, I’m not quite sure which, and so was Miss Brockhurst. And the Grekovs. That’s why they were all here, and I expect others would have joined them eventually, and together they would plan how to bring communism to England. I think that’s why Miss Asquith decided to escape—because she realized she had revealed too much to me, and then she noticed the speaking tube and—”
Here Miles’s frown of disapproval became one of bafflement. “What speaking tube? What are you talking about?”
Eva raised a hand to point into the room. “There, on the wall. The tubes lead to the servants’ quarters on the upper floor. Lady Phoebe and I opened them to the bedrooms so I could listen in on conversations and—” She left off, suddenly not quite as proud of their plan as she had hitherto been. Speaking of it out loud now, she heard how underhanded it sounded. As she had initially told Lady Phoebe, if she had been caught in such a scheme at home, she’d have been given the sack immediately.
Judging by Miles’s expression, he didn’t think much of their spying, either.
She spoke again before he could. “I know, it was most inelegant of us, most deceitful and—”
He raised a finger to her lips to silence her. “It was an ingenious idea. I’m only peeved with you for putting yourself in danger.”
His touch left behind a tingle and a trace of warmth. Eve savored the sensation, before saying, “You haven’t said if you found the Grekovs.”
“No, not yet, I’m afraid. But I have constables in the surrounding villages on the alert. The Grekovs are on foot, so they can hardly go far without being found out.” He blew out a breath. “But I must leave again and spread the word about Olive Asquith. It could very well be that wherever the Grekovs are headed, she’s going there, too.”
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