“I can imagine their fury! They were expecting to stay for at least another week.”
“If you ask me house parties always go on for far too long,” the Marquis remarked. “For the first few nights the conversation seems witty and entertaining, but after that one has heard all the jokes and even one’s drink seems to taste stale.”
“You are spoilt, that is what’s the matter with you!”
“Nonsense!” the Marquis replied. “We are just too intelligent for the type of people with whom we are forced to associate.”
Anthony laughed.
“I would love to see their faces if they heard you say that!”
“For the moment I have no wish to see any of them again,” the Marquis answered petulantly.
The butler announced dinner and they walked into a delightful room that overlooked another part of the garden.
A huge window, which almost covered one wall, was open and the sun was sinking behind the trees in a blaze of glory.
“I wish I could paint that,” the Marquis sighed.
“Van de Velde did his best,” Anthony replied, “and I see you have two excellent pictures of his on the stairs.”
“They portray the sea which is why my father bought them,” the Marquis answered.
They sat down at the table, which was lit by four candles in exquisitely chased gold candlesticks.
In the centre of them was a gold ship which Anthony stared at with undisguised admiration.
“I must say,” he said, “I can well understand your father collecting everything to do with the sea. What I cannot understand is your taking so little interest in what he bought and leaving it here instead of taking it with you to Veryan or to London.”
“I never thought of it,” the Marquis said simply. “The things here belong to Heathcliffe and I like everything in its rightful place.”
He thought again, as he spoke, of the snuffboxes and decided that he would not show them to Anthony until they were all back in the showcase.
The dinner was good and the Marquis appreciated that the fish was fresh from the sea and the partridges, if a little tough, had obviously been shot when the household had been told of their arrival.
The beef, however, was tender and excellent and Anthony, who had a second helping of nearly everything, exclaimed when the fruit was put on the table,
“I have enjoyed my dinner! I had thought I was too tired to eat, but now I feel better.”
“It’s the sea air,” the Marquis explained. “Wait until tomorrow, you will be ready to eat an ox all to yourself!”
“We shall need some exercise first.”
“A swim in the sea will provide that and, of course, the horses. I have told Bradley to send us at least a dozen.”
Anthony laughed.
“A grand gesture.”
“I am determined you shall not be bored.”
“I would be more impressed were I not certain you are really thinking of yourself!” Anthony teased.
“I have always found in the country one has to make one’s own diversions,” the Marquis said loftily, “and that is what I intend to do while we are hiding here.”
“Hiding?” Anthony queried. “So you admit that is what you are doing?”
“Of course I am,” the Marquis answered. “I don’t intend to return to London until I am quite certain that there are no storms or tempests waiting for me.”
“I have a feeling that might be a long time,” Anthony smiled, “and knowing how easily you become bored, Justin, I am feeling rather apprehensive in case the peace and quiet of the country, where nothing ever happens, palls too quickly.”
“I will tell you if it does,” the Marquis said, “but I know one thing – we shall find this brandy a considerable solace.”
Anthony sipped from the glass that the servant had just put beside him.
“You are right,” he cried. “It is exceptional!”
“It must have been in the cellar a long time or perhaps it crossed the Channel under the very nose of the coastguards.”
“Smugglers!” Anthony exclaimed. “Well, if you get really bored here we might even join them.”
“There is no point in smuggling now the war is over,” the Marquis said, “except to avoid paying the excise men.”
“No, that is true,” Anthony agreed. “It seems to me the peace takes away quite a lot of the excitement in life except, of course, where women are concerned.”
“There you are, back on the same subject!” the Marquis groaned. “I refuse even to think of the fair sex or the dangers of smuggling, but will concentrate on peace and contentment.”
“I will drink to that, Justin. May your appreciation of such obvious virtues long continue!”
“The trouble with you is that you are a cynic!” “That is the pot calling the kettle black!” Anthony exclaimed. “You have been one ever since I can remember. All I can say is if this mellow benign mood lasts I shall be extremely surprised.”
The butler placed a decanter of port and one of brandy in front of the Marquis and he and the footmen withdrew from the dining room.
There was the sound of a sudden crash outside, which made the Marquis frown.
It had struck him over dinner that most of the waiting seemed to have been done by the butler, while the four footmen seemed clumsy and ill at ease.
Their uniforms did not fit and, with his eye for detail and his desire for perfection, the Marquis decided that this was another issue he must discuss with Markham tomorrow.
The sun was now only a golden glow on the horizon behind the trees, but they were still silhouetted against the changing sky.
There was the caw of the rooks going to roost in one of the big elms and the Marquis thought that he heard the first high squeak of a bat.
He leaned back in his chair and felt that he was, in fact, at peace with all the world.
Then suddenly there was a footstep at the window and a deep voice rang out,
“Don’t move, gentlemen, please.”
The Marquis stared in sheer astonishment.
Standing in the centre of the open window was a man with a pistol in each hand and he was wearing not a mask but a hood over his head, which gave him a very strange appearance.
There were only slits for his eyes, his nose and his mouth, but beneath the hood he was conventionally dressed with a high intricately tied white cravat, cut-away coat which fitted him to perfection, buckskin breeches and highly polished boots.
“What the devil – ?” the Marquis began and would have moved but the man said again,
“Keep your place, my Lord, unless you wish to have a piece of lead blown through your shoulder.”
The manner in which he spoke was quiet and slow, but there was also a note of determination that in its way was more menacing than if he had shouted.
Looking at the newcomer with fascinated eyes, the Marquis was aware that the door into the corridor had opened and he turned his head to see another man, also hooded, come into the room.
He held in his hand a black bag that appeared to be heavy and, as he walked towards the table, the Marquis was aware that his clothes were very different from those of the man in the window.
They were the clothes of a servant and his coat was old-fashioned in shape and rather full.
He seemed to know exactly what to do, for he stood by the Marquis’s side and the man in the window said,
“Kindly, gentlemen, place any money you have with you, on the table – also your jewellery.”
The Marquis was calculating whether he would take a risk and whether, if he and Anthony charged the two men simultaneously they would prove too strong for the robbers.
Then, while he hesitated, through the door to the servants’ quarters came a third man.
He also carried a black bag in his hand.
Cursing at feeling so impotent, the Marquis pulled a purse from his pocket which contained quite a number of guineas because usually when they were alone together he a
nd Anthony played piquet and it was easier to play for money than for I.O.Us.
Anthony did the same.
“Your ring and your cravat pin,” the man in the window ordered.
Then to the Marquis, moving the pistol in this direction,
“I think my Lord, you are wearing a watch.”
The Marquis stiffened, a refusal on his lips, but the pistol pointing at him from a distance of perhaps ten feet told him that it would be foolish to take a risk.
The watch had been his father’s and it was on a fob from which dangled a large flawless emerald that he had always thought of as his ‘luck’.
As it happened, he seldom wore the fob and never in the daytime, because, like Beau Brummel, he thought that jewellery was ostentatious.
He had actually put it on tonight out of sheer sentiment. Now he was furious to think that he had done so.
The hooded man beside him took the watch, the money and the objects that Anthony had placed on the table and waited for instructions.
“The ship in the centre of the table,” the deep voice said. “Carry it carefully. It looks fragile and it would be a pity to spoil anything of such beauty.”
There was no doubt they were being mocked and the Marquis felt a surge of sheer fury sweep over him, that made him clench his hands and tense his whole body, as if he might spring at the robber.
As if he knew what he was feeling, the man commented,
“I should not do anything foolish, my Lord Marquis, an arm in a sling can be very restrictive.”
Again there was that mocking note behind the words.
“Dammit!” the Marquis swore, goaded at last into speech. “I will see that you hang on a gibbet, if it is the last thing I do.”
“I doubt it,” the highwayman replied coolly. “But even that might give you a new interest, although not such an enjoyable one as winning a race or squiring a beautiful lady.”
“I have no wish to listen to your impertinence,” the Marquis retorted.
The highwayman made a sound that was not exactly a laugh but more of a chuckle as if he was glad he had got under the Marquis’s skin. Then he made a gesture with the pistol in his right hand and the two other men slipped past him through the window.
The Marquis heard them running across the garden.
The highwayman waited, as if making sure they were safely away. Then he said,
“I suggest, gentlemen, that you keep your seats for the next two minutes. If you are thinking of following me, I would like you to know that I am a very accurate shot.”
As he spoke, he moved back through the window still with his pistols pointed at the Marquis and Anthony.
Then with a swiftness that somehow seemed almost magical he vanished out of sight.
One moment he was there, the next he had gone and, although the Marquis pushed back his chair and went to the open window, by the time he had reached it the garden, now in shadow, was quiet and empty.
Then, as he listened, far away in the distance he heard the sound of galloping hoofs.
“My God, I would not have believed it!” Anthony exclaimed. “I have never been so astonished in my whole life!”
The Marquis was looking out into the garden still listening, then after a moment he said,
“I suppose it’s useless to try and follow them?”
“I should imagine completely!” Anthony answered. “By the time we are mounted they could be two or three miles away.”
They walked back to the table and sat down and the Marquis helped himself to a brandy and passed the decanter to his friend.
“Did you ever see anything so cool?” Anthony asked.
“This has been planned for a long time,” the Marquis observed.
“Why should you think that?”
“Do you realise neither of the two men who were collecting the spoils hesitated? They knew exactly what to do and waited only for the word of command.”
“How the hell did they know we were here?” Anthony enquired. “After all, we only arrived unexpectedly this evening, unless they were intending to come anyway.”
“It’s a possibility,” the Marquis said. “At the same time, in that case why tonight?”
He looked at the space on the table where the gold ship had stood and said,
“I wonder what else they have taken.”
“We must go and look,” Anthony replied. “In the meantime I need plenty of this brandy to sustain me. I am not used to highwaymen walking in when I am having dinner.”
“They were certainly different from any highwaymen I have seen before,” the Marquis said. “Why the hoods? Usually a mask or a handkerchief up to the eyes is sufficient.”
“Yes, that is true,” Anthony agreed. “Do you remember that one who held us up on Hampstead Common? You shot him in the leg. I can still hear his screams as he galloped away.”
“I hardly expected I should have to be armed in my own dining room,” the Marquis said savagely.
“I have never heard of this happening to anyone else,” Anthony remarked.
“It’s not the sort of thing that ought to be happening at Heathcliffe and, if there are men like them terrorising the neighbourhood, then Markham should have warned us.”
“I cannot believe that he would expect such an outrage to happen the first night we arrive,” Anthony said.
He put his hand up to where his cravat pin had been and said angrily,
“I wish I had not broken my rule of never wearing jewellery. To tell the truth, I tied my own cravat and tied it so badly as I was tired that I required a pin to keep it in place.”
“The one thing I mind their taking,” the Marquis said, “is my father’s watch and my fob.”
“We don’t know what else they have taken.”
The Marquis made a sound that was almost a cry.
“I bet it was the snuffboxes,” he said. “I was looking at them before dinner and I thought that they were too valuable to leave lying about. I can only pray they did not get the ones in the safe.”
As he spoke, he remembered the third man who had come through the door that led towards the kitchen.
He jumped up and walked across the room, opened the door that the highwayman had shut behind him and went into the pantry that adjoined the dining room.
One look was enough to tell him his worst fears had been realised.
The door of the huge safe that almost covered one wall in the pantry was open.
It was something he knew always happened when a dinner was in progress, the gold and silver ornaments had to be taken from the safe and placed on the table, then returned to it when dinner was over.
It would be too much to expect the servants to lock the safe for the short time that the meal was in progress.
The Marquis pulled the safe door wide seeing, as he spoke, inside it on the narrow shelves that there were still a great number of items, teapots, coffee jugs, gold candelabra which were used at big banquets, huge piles of silver plate that were kept for special dinners.
It was impossible to know whether the snuffboxes had been there or not and he was aware that only Markham would be able to ascertain exactly what was missing.
Still extremely angry because he felt so helpless, the Marquis without speaking walked from the pantry and along the passage that led to the hall.
There, followed by Anthony, he went into the library.
Although it was dusk there were no candles lit in this room, but it was quite easy to see in the faint light that came from the windows that the top of the glass cabinet was open.
The Marquis went through the motions of looking to see what was left inside, knowing the answer before he did so.
“Curse it!” he shouted out furiously. “They have taken every one of my father’s snuffboxes!”
“I am sorry, Justin,” Anthony said sympathetically.
“We ought to have done something – we ought to have stopped them.”
“That is what I thought,” Anthony agreed, �
��but quite frankly I did not like the look of that fellow’s pistols. I am quite prepared to believe that he is the crack shot he boasted of being.”
The Marquis with difficulty prevented himself from cursing the highwayman with every oath he had ever learned in the Army. At the same time his dignity told him that there was no point in sinking to the level of the robbers, even if this one was different.
Later in the drawing room they went over the man’s points for future identification.
“I suppose you could say he was a gentleman,” Anthony said. “He spoke like one.”
“He had a peculiarly low voice that I would recognise again,” the Marquis added.
“So should I,” Anthony agreed. “He was not very tall, but very slim and athletic in the way he moved and he was well dressed.”
“Dammit, that might apply to hundreds of men,” the Marquis said. “The only real clue we have to his identity is that his voice was deeper than most people’s.”
“I have thought of something else,” Anthony remarked.
“What is that?”
“He must have known the layout of the house. While one of his men cleared the snuffboxes out of the library, the other must have moved into the pantry almost as soon as the servants had left for their own supper. At least I imagine that is what they were having.”
The Marquis nodded.
“At Veryan they dine as soon as we have finished and I know that my chef there always lets the footmen have what he calls ‘the left-overs’, which they appreciate.”
“That proves my point, Justin. They knew that there would be nobody in the pantry and they cleared out the snuffboxes and timed to do so exactly as their chief walked in through the window, knowing that it would be open.”
“You certainly have a point there,” the Marquis concurred reflectively. “I will tell you something else.”
“What is that?”
“As their horses were leaving, they sounded fresh. I can always tell if a horse has been ridden a long way, because he sounds not exactly tired, but a little heavy. I would not mind betting those horses had not come far.”
“That narrows the field considerably.” Anthony yawned.
“Highwaymen or no highwaymen, unless they have taken my bed, I want to go to sleep.”
65 A Heart Is Stolen Page 4