Next came skating on the frozen lake, and then the children’s party, when all of them – even prim Veronica – joined in with noisy games of pass the parcel and hunt the slipper and blind man’s buff. Only Vincent stood apart, smirking from the sidelines as Sophie carefully tied the blindfold over a little girl’s eyes, and first Leo, then Mr Pendleton and then Lil obligingly allowed themselves to be caught. He wouldn’t even take part in the country dancing that followed, rudely refusing when Mrs Dawes gently suggested he could be partners with Veronica, and leaving her looking quite offended. From where she was whirling about with Jack, Lil and three of the estate children, Sophie was glad to see Mr Pendleton swiftly stepping in and volunteering himself as Veronica’s partner instead.
After that of course, it was time to dress for dinner, and for another meal – and so it was not until they were sitting in the Drawing Room later that evening that Sophie and Lil had the chance to explain Lil’s plan to the others. For the plan to work they would need plenty of helpers, so they had decided to recruit Mr Pendleton and Veronica to assist. Unfortunately, they both seemed rather baffled by Lil’s excited explanations, whilst even Jack and Leo frowned, looking uncertain. Sophie found herself wishing very much that Billy and Joe were there. She knew that they would have been quick to understand the plan! She wondered how the two boys had been spending Christmas Day, and made up her mind to write them a letter to tell them all about the new mystery. Perhaps she could write it before she went to sleep – but no, she thought, if she waited until tomorrow afternoon, she’d be able to write about the visit to Colonel Fairley too. She felt a quick flutter of nervousness and excitement at the thought.
‘Surely you don’t really think that anyone from the house party could be stealing things from the house?’ Veronica was asking.
‘We don’t know for sure – but Tilly must have seen someone,’ said Lil impatiently. ‘We have to find out who. Listen, it’s all quite straightforward,’ she went on, folding her hands with an important air. ‘Tomorrow night, after dinner, we divide ourselves up into three groups. The first waits out of sight, somewhere close to the door that leads into the East Wing. Meanwhile, the second group hides outside near the folly. Whether our “ghost” gets in through the door into the house, or uses the secret entrance – we can’t miss them. Do you see?’
‘I think so,’ said Mr Pendleton. ‘We get the blighter surrounded – catch him in the act – and then bop him on the head!’ he finished, illustrating this with a dramatic gesture.
‘I really don’t think we’ll need to go bopping anyone on the head,’ said Sophie hurriedly.
‘Absolutely not,’ said Lil. ‘We just want to find out who they are. Then we will confront them – and let them know that it’s simply not decent to go around pinching things, and pretending to be a ghost!’
‘What about the third group?’ asked Veronica, frowning.
‘Well, the third group go to the Drawing Room after dinner as usual and keep a sharp eye out for Miss Selina and Vincent, as they are our main suspects. That’s your job – and Mr Pendleton’s.’
Veronica looked relieved. ‘So all we need to do is stay in the Drawing Room and watch them?’
‘That’s right. Stick to them like glue, and if they show any signs of sneaking off to the East Wing, then follow them. Mr Pendleton had better watch Vincent, since he’ll be with the gentlemen after dinner. You can keep an eye on Miss Selina.’ Lil turned to Leo. ‘You and Tilly can watch the East Wing door. That leaves Jack, Sophie and I outside watching the folly.’
‘Jolly good!’ said Mr Pendleton cheerfully. He turned to Sophie. ‘I say, this detective business is rather a lark, what?’
Sophie smiled and nodded absently, but for once her mind was not really on detecting – or even the mysterious Winter Hall ghost. She couldn’t stop thinking about tomorrow’s visit to Colonel Fairley.
PART III
The Body in the Library
‘This was no accident,’ said Montgomery Baxter, as he scrutinised the scene through his magnifying glass.
‘There can be no doubt that this is a case of foul play!’
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘This must be it,’ said Sophie nervously. The gate opened with a creak, and she, Lil and Jack picked their way carefully up the icy footpath through the garden.
She had been determined to set out to Alwick promptly that morning and had asked Leo about it at breakfast before she had eaten so much as a bite.
‘Of course,’ said Leo. ‘I’ll ask Alf to bring the motor round as soon as possible.’
‘But you can’t go alone,’ said Lil, helping herself to more toast and spreading it liberally with butter.
‘Of course not. After all, we don’t know a thing about this fellow,’ agreed Jack. ‘Lil and I will come with you.’
The Fitzgeralds’ chauffeur had driven the three of them slowly along the icy roads back to Alwick. He would wait for them in the old inn on the village green, while they traipsed up the path through the snow towards the large, pleasant-looking residence that the innkeeper had pointed out as Alwick House.
A small, white-haired lady in a rustling black silk dress and an old-fashioned lace cap answered their ring. Sophie felt almost too apprehensive to speak, so it was Lil who said: ‘Good morning – is this the Fairley residence?’
The lady – who must be the housekeeper, judging by the bunch of keys at her waist – beamed at them. ‘Oh yes,’ she said warmly. ‘And you’ll be here to see the master, I suppose? Come in – you’ll find him in the Library.’
They looked at each other in surprise at this warm welcome. It was almost as though she had known they were coming, Sophie thought. While they took off their coats and wiped the snow from their boots, she glanced quickly around the pleasant hall, full of books and pictures. Her heart was thumping with anticipation as the housekeeper led the way along the hall.
‘And here’s the master,’ she announced, as she opened the Library door.
Before them was a cosy, comfortable room, the walls lined with rows of old leather-bound books, and a fire roaring in the grate. The windows looked over a pretty walled garden, which lay under a blanket of snow. Under the window, a large desk was laid out with pen, ink stand and blotter: but the big leather chair behind it was empty. The room appeared to be totally unoccupied, with the exception of a very large Persian cat curled up on the hearthrug.
Jack was the first one to speak. ‘Er – I do beg your pardon,’ he said, very politely. ‘But where is Colonel Fairley?’
The housekeeper looked taken aback. ‘Oh dear – I thought you knew!’
‘Knew what?’ asked Lil at once.
Her smile had faded; her face was concerned now. ‘I’m terribly sorry, but if you’re looking for the Colonel – well, you won’t find him here.’
Sophie’s heart sank. ‘Where is he?’
‘I’m afraid Colonel Fairley has passed on.’
Lil gaped at her. ‘Do you mean to say he’s dead?’
‘I’m afraid so. The poor gentleman. About this time last year it was, in this very room.’ She shook her head sorrowfully, and explained: ‘He was cleaning one of his revolvers, and it went off in his hands. He was killed at once. Such a sad accident! And the Colonel ever such a kind gentleman.’
‘He died? He died this time last year?’ Sophie repeated in a quivering voice. She could scarcely believe her ears.
‘That’s right, miss. A sad Christmas it was, for all of us. I am sorry – I didn’t know that you wanted to see the old master. I assumed you must be here to see the new master. That’s Mr Marmaduke, here. We get a lot of young folks coming to pay a call upon him, thinking it amusing.’
To all of their amazement, she gestured to the cat dozing regally on the rug.
‘This – he – is your new master?’ repeated Jack incredulously.
‘That’s right,’ the housekeeper said, nodding earnestly. ‘Folks think it’s a little queer, and I must say, I never thought I’d
see the day when I was housekeeper to a cat! But the Colonel was a bachelor gentleman – he had no wife or child. Mr Marmaduke here was his nearest and dearest. After he died, when they looked at his will, they found that the Colonel had named Mr Marmaduke as his heir. It was just the sort of odd thing he might do, for he was what you might call an eccentric gentleman.’
‘But . . . is that even legal?’ asked Jack.
‘Well it would seem that it is,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Though it caused a few ructions, I can tell you. Lawyers up from London and quite a to-do. But they said it was all perfectly right and proper, so Mr Marmaduke is the master here now.’
Sophie said nothing: she couldn’t speak. She had spent days anticipating this meeting and imagining it – but Colonel Fairley was dead. She found herself blinking back tears.
Lil was staring in rapt fascination at the cat, so Jack was left to do his best to reply. ‘How – very interesting!’ he said gamely. ‘Well, ma’am, perhaps we should explain our business with the Colonel, and maybe you can help us. Miss Taylor here recently discovered that her late father was a close personal friend of the Colonel, which is why she wanted to meet him.’
The housekeeper looked thoughtful. ‘A Mr Taylor? I don’t remember a gentleman of that name. But then, the Colonel had a great many friends. Very sociable gentleman, he was.’
‘Do you think he might have had any mementos of Miss Taylor’s father? Photographs or letters or anything of that sort?’
‘Well now, I suppose there could be,’ said the housekeeper readily. ‘All the Colonel’s papers are here. The relations were very particular about that. There’s a great-nephew in Harrogate who is next in line to inherit and he made quite a fuss about making sure all the Colonel’s papers and business effects are kept in order.’
‘Mr Marmaduke doesn’t have any children, then?’ Jack asked. ‘They wouldn’t be – er – next in line?’
‘Well between you and me, I expect he probably does have a few offspring,’ said the housekeeper confidentially. ‘But it’s a bit difficult to prove for sure. That’s what the legal gentlemen said, at any rate.’
Jack looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh, but Lil had seen what he had been driving at. ‘Do you think we could perhaps have a look through those papers?’ she suggested quickly. ‘Just in case there might be any photographs of Sophie’s papa – or anything like that?’
The housekeeper beamed at them. ‘Well now – I don’t see why you shouldn’t – and take what you like too! The Harrogate great-nephew doesn’t care a button for the Colonel’s personal things – it’s only the business papers and the old books and paintings he’s interested in! Only the things that might be worth something,’ she said disapprovingly. ‘Terribly particular he is about those! But you help yourselves to any personal photographs or letters, my dears. We’d rather see them go to someone who will value them, wouldn’t we, Mr Marmaduke?’ At the fireside, the big cat gave a throaty meow and stretched out one paw, quite as if he were answering her.
She showed them over to a cabinet where the Colonel’s papers had been kept, and then bustled out to fetch some refreshments. ‘You need something to keep out the cold on a day like this.’ After bringing them a jug of cocoa and a plate of currant buns, she departed again, murmuring something about needing to prepare Mr Marmaduke’s luncheon.
‘I say, how peculiar! I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anything like it in my life!’ burst out Lil as soon as she had left the room. ‘Who would leave their fortune to a cat?’
‘Ssshhhh! Make sure you don’t offend Mr Marmaduke,’ said Jack, chuckling. ‘He might throw us out of his house.’
The cat blinked his large green eyes at them reproachfully.
‘It’s an awful shame about Colonel Fairley,’ said Lil in a more serious voice. ‘I am sorry, Sophie. I suppose that explains why you never heard from him when your papa died.’
Sophie had bent down to Mr Marmaduke, who was regally consenting to be stroked. Now, she had to swallow before she could answer: ‘I suppose it does. He died a year ago too – that’s the same time as Papa.’
‘Come on,’ said Jack, in an effort to be cheerful. ‘Let’s take a look at those papers. You never know what we might find.’
They spent the next half hour busily searching through Colonel Fairley’s cabinet, with occasional breaks to sip cocoa and nibble buns. There was a great deal to look at: the Colonel had obviously been a man with considerable involvement in local affairs and, as the housekeeper had told them, a great many friends. There were plenty of letters, but nothing from Sophie’s father – though after picking over a few old photographs, Sophie at last uncovered a picture of a group of military gentlemen in dress uniforms, and spotted amongst them the figure of her papa.
Staring at the photograph, a new wave of sadness swept over her. He was slipping away from her so fast, she thought, looking at the indistinct black and white figure. She had really hoped that she was going to at last find someone who had known him, someone who she could talk to about him and would help her remember. Instead, the Colonel had gone too.
‘He was rather an antiquarian chap, wasn’t he?’ Jack was saying. ‘Lots of these seem to be receipts for purchases of books or paintings. Some jolly interesting stuff too.’
‘Yes – just look at all these books,’ said Lil, who had lost patience with searching through old letters, and had begun to roam around the room. She ran a finger along some leather-bound spines. ‘Half the titles are in Latin, and some of them look awfully old.’ She lifted down a big volume and flicked through the old pages, growing brown at the edges. ‘I don’t know how anyone could actually read this. Such funny old-fashioned printing.’
Jack got up to join her. ‘Look at this one,’ he began, removing another volume from the shelves, its crimson cover richly gilded with a design of three winged lions. As he did so, a folded piece of paper that seemed to have been wedged inside fell to the floor.
Lil picked it up and unfolded it. ‘Oh! But whatever is this doing here?’ she said, her voice shocked. ‘Sophie –!’
She held it out, and with the photograph still in her hand, Sophie scrambled up from where she had been sitting on the rug. She took the paper; it was an old envelope, addressed in a neat hand:
Sophie looked from the envelope, to Lil’s baffled face, and then back again, but just then the door opened and the housekeeper came bustling in again. Lil thrust the envelope quickly into the pocket of her frock.
‘Well, then – and did you find what you were looking for?’ asked the housekeeper.
Sophie held out the photograph that she was still holding, and the housekeeper took it. ‘Bless my soul. That’s Captain Cavendish! You don’t mean to say he was your father, my dear?’
‘That’s right – Captain Robert Taylor-Cavendish was his full name,’ she explained.
‘Fancy that! I knew him as Captain Cavendish. He’d been in the Colonel’s regiment, and the two of them were thick as thieves. Of course, we hadn’t seen much of him for a few years, not since the Colonel retired. The Captain was always busy with all those travels to foreign parts. And so the poor gentleman is gone too, is he? Well, I’m sorry for your loss, my dear. You take the picture, by all means.’ She pressed the photograph into Sophie’s hands, and seemed inclined to say more, but her sympathetic face was more than Sophie could bear. All at once, she wanted very much to get out of the house and away.
‘Thank you,’ she managed to say to the housekeeper. ‘You’ve been very kind. If you’re sure it’s really all right, I’ll take the photograph. But we’d better be going now. They’re expecting us back at Winter Hall for luncheon.’
They said their goodbyes and hurried together down the snowy path, back towards the inn and the village green.
‘What on earth could a letter to the Lim family be doing in Colonel Fairley’s study?’ demanded Lil in a low, urgent voice.
‘Sssshhh!’ hissed Sophie. ‘Let’s wait until we’re alone.’
In spite of her warm coat, she found that she was suddenly very cold. For as they climbed into the back of the Fitzgerald’s motor, she had seen that watching them from the snowy village green was the familiar figure of a little old lady, wearing a bunch of purple violets in her velvet hat.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘You really found this in Colonel Fairley’s library?’
Leo gazed at the envelope in fascination, turning it over between her long, thin fingers. Back at Winter Hall, the four of them were sitting before the fire in the Nursery – supposedly playing at paper games, but the pencils and paper were quite abandoned while they all pored over the envelope addressed to Mr L Lim.
They had known at once who that was, of course. There was only one L.LIM & SONS in Limehouse. L Lim was Mei and Song’s grandfather, who had died earlier that year, and whose name was above the door of the shop. None of them had ever met Grandfather Lim, but they knew that Mei and Song had been very close to him. What was more, Sophie had always thought of him as an ally – for they had discovered that he too had been on the trail of the Baron.
Now, they examined the envelope in detail. It was an ordinary stamped envelope, a little yellowed now, as though it had been wedged inside the book for some time. The flap of the envelope had been secured with a red wax seal stamped with the shape of a lion’s head, but the seal had been broken, and whatever letter or note might once have been inside, the envelope was now completely empty.
‘It must have been written by Colonel Fairley,’ said Jack. ‘The handwriting matches the writing on those letters we were looking at in that cabinet.’
‘But it was never actually posted,’ said Sophie. ‘There’s no postmark.’
‘Do you suppose the Colonel wrote this letter and then thought better of it?’ suggested Lil. ‘Or could someone else have found it before he had a chance to post it – and taken out the letter inside?’
The Midnight Peacock Page 10