by Issy Brooke
Twenty-four
Theodore could not persuade Montgomery to agree with him. Friday had worn through to the evening and they were no closer to a plan of action. Montgomery wavered between insisting that he be allowed to leave, at whatever cost to his reputation, and wanting to simply fling Froude up against a wall and batter the truth out of him.
Neither option was a good one.
“The inspector is coming back from London today,” Theodore reassured him. “We do not need to agree on anything. All we need to do is keep Froude here until the inspector comes back which is probably tomorrow morning, and for all we know, he will have evidence with him.”
“Yes, but what if it’s evidence against me? Who knows what Froude has been up to behind my back? There are at least two policemen still here at the house. Let us bring them with us and confront Froude right now.”
“We cannot!” Theodore said in desperation and so the argument went on and on in a pointless circle.
But at least while they were arguing, Montgomery was not either fleeing or fighting, so Theodore decided to let the confrontation between themselves run on. It meant he could keep Montgomery where he could see him.
Unfortunately, while Theodore was with Montgomery, no one was with Froude. Theodore hoped that Adelia had had the sense to keep him occupied that day although he didn’t like to think about exactly how she was going to do that. At least Harriet was still at the house. Loathe though he was to admit it, the presence of the bishop’s wife was something of a boon. She could surely be a kind of chaperone.
Froude turned up at luncheon, and he was followed soon afterwards by Harriet and Adelia. Pegsworth came in late. Montgomery did not speak until Froude tried to make polite conversation with him. The discredited academic did his best to feign normality and he answered in a stiff way. Froude seemed to notice something was amiss, however, and Theodore felt increasingly under the man’s curious and watchful eye. He was sure that he was sweating with tension and he dabbed nervously at his forehead before forcing himself to stop and breathe deeply.
When would the day be over, he groaned to himself, repeatedly. The minutes became hours. Froude stared. Montgomery muttered. Pegsworth ate with the speed of a starving dog, if not the manners, and shot out of the room before anyone else had finished their fruit course.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Froude said suddenly, pushing his chair back so violently as he stood up that it fell to the floor. A waiting footman sprang forward to right it, and Froude knocked his arm out of the way with a snarl, unleashing his pent-up anger on the poor servant. “Get away, you fool! I’m perfectly capable of picking up a chair.”
“What do you mean, you’ve have enough?” Adelia asked.
Froude shoved the chair under the table. “This. Sitting here, with a murderer, waiting for the slow wheels of justice to come to the wrong conclusions while my business crumbles before it even got started. I’m leaving.”
“I thought you had agreed to stay until after the dinner,” said Adelia.
“I don’t give a damn about the dinner!” he growled. “I thought about it and damn it all.”
“I say, watch your language in front of my wife, sir,” Theodore said, straightening up.
Froude pressed his knuckles on the table and leaned forward to address Adelia. “I was only going to the dinner on your behalf, anyway. I don’t give a – a fig – for Prendergast or any of them. Any of you,” he added, raking his gaze around the assembled diners. “That’s it,” he said, and stamped out of the room like an angry child.
“He can’t leave,” Adelia said in a panic, looking at Theodore.
“I’ll stop him,” Theodore replied, standing up, but then he wavered. How, exactly, was he going to do that? “We need Prendergast here, now,” he said. “And the constables – they have to be alerted – there’s one at the front door and one around the back.”
“That one’s gone home ill, sir,” said the footman. “But we are all ready and able to help, sir. Say the word.”
“Good man!”
“Wait,” said Harriet. “Are you all seriously proposing you all simply jump on Froude and restrain him?”
“Yes, that is the suggestion,” Theodore said. “Me, Montgomery, some of the handier footman, the coachman is a burly fellow, and the constable from the front door – that’s plenty of men.”
“Earlier you were counselling against such a course of action,” Montgomery said, jumping to his feet alongside Theodore. “I am glad to hear you have come to your senses. Let’s go – we must stop him before he leaves.”
“Wait!” cried Adelia, throwing down her napkin. “Let me try to persuade him to stay. I do not think that physically locking him up here can possibly go well for us in court.”
“We have no choice,” said Montgomery fiercely. “If we don’t stop him, I shall hang for this murder, and that, I refuse to do.” He set off for the door.
Theodore shot a long look at Adelia, trying to convey apology, resignation, and confidence, all in the same expression.
She frowned. She was clearly not convinced.
He thought he heard her say something as he left the room, but he could not afford to stop and ask her now. He went on after Montgomery, his heart thudding.
He believed that Froude was the murderer.
But if he had got this all dreadfully wrong, then he was going to be complicit in aiding the real murderer to convict an innocent man.
ADELIA RUSHED OUT OF the room as soon as they had gone. The two men had headed towards the guest quarters in order to intercept Froude and indulge in whatever noisy and warlike scenario they had concocted in their heads. Adelia paused in the corridor. A maid had pressed herself out of sight behind an aspidistra in a large vase by a window, clutching a duster.
“Betty Reynolds?”
“Yes, my lady?”
“Which way did Mr Froude go?”
“Downstairs, that way, my lady.”
“Thank you.” Adelia set off in the direction indicated by a flap of the duster, shaking her head at the blind wilfulness of men. She also had the dubious privilege of knowing Froude rather well. If he were intending on leaving, he would have planned it already. They would soon find his rooms empty, she was sure of it.
By that point, it would be too late to stop him. And she didn’t think violence was going to work. If he wasn’t carrying at least two pistols, she would be very surprised indeed.
She followed the corridor and tripped down a short flight of back stairs which brought her out on a lower level at the rear of the house where everything was a higgledy-piggledy maze of narrow corridors and half-steps to trip the unwary. There was no one about but she felt sure he must be leaving so she followed the passageway that led out to the stables.
And there he was, standing at the head of a horse that was hitched to a plain cart of the sort that farmers would use, with solid wooden sides about two and a half feet high so that from her position on the ground, she could not see into it. He looked up as she approached, her hands spread wide in supplication.
“If you’ve come to persuade me to stay, you are wasting your time,” he snarled at her.
“Please. Please think about it.” She inched closer, her heart pounding. “For me, Samuel. For what we once shared.”
“I expect you think you can use your feminine wiles where the brute force of your husband would fail, do you?”
She was only a few feet away from him now. “I hoped I might appeal to your better nature.”
“You’ve changed your tune, haven’t you? A few days ago, you couldn’t get away from me fast enough. That makes me suspect a trick, you know. Maybe you are planning some kind of ambush.” He twisted one side of his face in a grin that held no humour.
“No, Samuel, I promise you.” She dropped her voice and tried to speak with honesty, hoping that it would somehow be enough. Everyone had some spark of goodness deep within their souls, didn’t they? She always believed that. The belief might have
got her into trouble – it was why she had continued to help Alf, in spite of his continual betrayals. But it was her defining belief. Without that, she felt all was lost in the world. To admit a person might be beyond redemption was something so awful that she could not imagine it. She knew she shared this belief with both Theodore and Harriet and she hoped she’d instilled it in her own daughters, too.
“This is no trick,” she said, now a foot away from him.
He laughed, and grabbed her so roughly she squeaked in alarm. “You think you’re the only one who can stake an ambush, don’t you? You think you’re cleverer than me, with your pleadings and your whispers and your sickening appeal to some higher self or whatever it was.” He spun her around before she could do a thing and dragged both of her arms behind her back, pressing her hard against the cart’s side, pushing her along so that they were both out of sight of the house. She tried to call out but he had hold of her wrist in a particular way – almost lightly, but when he moved his hand just gently, it sent a searing pain up her arm. She gasped in shock, and he eased the pressure. She understood immediately. If he put his mind to it, she realised, he would snap her arm or dislocate her shoulder with just one quick movement.
“The coachman, the grooms, they are watching...” she whispered.
“Actually no. They have already been dealt with, but that’s no business of yours. And now we need to go.” He twisted her arm again, but whether that was a punishment for her speech or a distraction to have her weeping while he tied a rope around her wrists, she did not know, and was in too much pain to really care. She whimpered again as he grabbed her around the waist and half-lifted, half-forced her up into the cart from the tailgate end. She scrabbled in the dusty hay as he pushed her inelegantly from behind, making her tumble onto her face unable to stop herself. He slammed the cart’s gate shut and shot the bolts home. She wriggled along, rolling onto her side, trying to sit up, a feat made almost impossible by her enormous skirts, corset and bound hands. He watched her for a moment, almost amused, before saying, “If you try to jump free as we are moving, you will break more than one bone.”
“It will be preferable to whatever you have planned,” she shot at him in venom.
“You don’t know what I have planned for you, though,” he replied. “You didn’t expect this yet I have planned it for a while. This kind of thing doesn’t just happen in an instant.”
She didn’t believe him. He was prone to these arrogances, where he would change his mind dramatically but claim it was what he meant to do all along. Before she could fling that charge at him, he had gone around to the front of the cart and hauled himself up onto the wooden bench, flicked the reins and urged the pony into a lumbering trot.
She half-lay against a bale of hay, feeling every jolt up her spine, and watched as the shape of Thringley House grew smaller and smaller behind them.
Twenty-five
Theodore and Montgomery were still in Froude’s guest room, pondering what to do. In spite of his words at the meal, it currently looked as if the man had no intention of leaving that very moment. There was a shirt hanging on the back of a chair, and his travelling case was open at the foot of his bed.
“We must search the house, thoroughly,” Montgomery said. “It seems as though his announcement that he was leaving was a mere bluff. He is still here, somewhere. I hope the servants are alert and watching...” He didn’t mention that Adelia had gone after Froude. He didn’t need to. Theodore was very aware of it.
Something else tugged at Theodore. There was something very wrong in what he was looking at in the room. “No, wait,” he said. “His room did not look like this when we searched it before.”
“We? Who?”
“The inspector and I searched all the rooms looking for clues,” Theodore said, distractedly, gazing around. “But it had been neat and tidy then. This is not how the man lives, not at all.”
“What do you mean you searched all the rooms? Do you mean to say that you went into my room, and probed into my things?”
“Yes, of course – sorry, of course, but you understand it was all part of the investigation, don’t you?” But Theodore could tell from the look on Montgomery’s face that the other man was furiously angry.
“Good God,” Montgomery spluttered. “The violation of it! I might not have a title but I am a gentleman, sir, as much as you are.”
“Look, I’ll make it up to you, later. Brandy. Cigars. Dancing girls! Whatever you like. But let us concentrate on this – right now. This room has been laid out like a stage for actors,” he said. “This is not how Froude lives. This is what he wants us to think about how he lives.”
“What are you saying? That he’s gone anyway, and left this like this to fool us? He must have planned this before the meal because he has not had time to arrange it since then.”
“Yes. That is exactly what I am saying – what? What is it, boy? What on earth are you doing inside?” This last part was addressed to a lanky groom who was peering around the door and quivering in fear.
“If it please my lord, something’s happened in the stables, sir, and I don’t know what to do, sir, but the head groom’s gone into town with the coachman early this morning and it was only me and Pip there, sir, but Pip’s been ...”
Theodore and Montgomery shot down to the stables before the groom had barely finished speaking. There they found Pip sitting on the mounting block, rubbing his wrists and turning his shock and fear into adolescent anger. He jumped to his feet as Theodore and Montgomery approached, throwing back his bony shoulders to appear unharmed and unshaken.
“My lords,” he said, his nervousness still showing in his voice. “I don’t know what happened except that it all went black because some cove came up behind me and put a sack over my head. I did fight back, sirs, as much as I could but he beat me with something and got me to the floor – I couldn’t breathe, sirs, and then he tied me up. I was getting myself free when Will found me.”
“Good heavens,” said Theodore. “This must be the work of Froude too. But why would he do such a thing? He’s escaped, hasn’t he, on horseback?”
“We must follow him immediately,” cried Montgomery, spinning on one foot as if he didn’t know in which direction to head.
The events had drawn everyone else out of the house. The household servants jostled and bumped one another as they wanted to try to creep forward to see what was occurring without looking too inquisitive. Harriet came out, frowning, and by her side was Alfred Pegsworth.
“My lord,” said Will the groom. “Forgive me speaking but he has not gone on horseback, sir. What’s missing is a cart and a strong nag.”
“A cart?” Montgomery burst out. “What the devil did he want a cart for? What could he have been transporting that needed a cart?”
Harriet stepped forward, her face white. “Firstly, sir, I will thank you for minding your language in the presence of women. And secondly, I can tell you exactly what was in that cart. Or, rather, who...”
Theodore scanned the crowd. He finished her sentence. “Adelia.”
PANDEMONIUM BROKE OUT among the servants. Pegsworth stepped forward, his face as grey as Harriet’s and he said, loudly, “Then we must go after them at once.”
Montgomery appeared almost annoyed that someone else had said what he was clearly about to say. He half turned away from Pegsworth as he approached, and spoke directly to Theodore. “Let us saddle up and go immediately.”
Harriet said, urgently, “We must fetch the police!”
“I am the police,” said the sole remaining constable, running around on the gravel from the front of the house. “What is going on here?”
“Froude has left,” Theodore said, his firm voice overruling everyone else. “Didn’t you see them go? He has taken a cart, tied up one of the grooms and beaten him, and escaped. He has kidnapped my wife, too. We are to go after them immediately.”
“Kidnapped?” the constable said in confusion. “Are you sure that Lady Calaw
ay did not leave of her own free will with Mr Froude? There was a cart, but it was only a delivery. I let them go past.”
It was never going to take much to tip Theodore over the edge.
He stepped forward and without thinking a single coherent thing, he swung his arm back and around, and planted a blow clean on the side of the constable’s jaw. The policeman’s eyes rolled up in his head as he crumpled to the ground with a tiny “oof” of air leaving his pursed lips.
Thud.
A silence surrounded them for just one moment.
Then Theodore took charge. He pointed at the two grooms. “The pair of you, get to the police station and tell them everything. We need to organise a search for a cart driven by Froude. You know what the nag looks like, so tell them everything. We will ride out and try to find him, but it is of the utmost urgency that you muster the police force. Go!”
The two lads began to run. Some of the servants came forward to assist in tacking up two solid hunters for Montgomery and Theodore to ride. Harriet looked down at the prone policeman and prodded him with the tip of her toe. He groaned.
“He’s still alive, then,” she said, and stepped around him, heading for the gates after the two running grooms.
“Where are you going?” Theodore asked, suspicion never far from his mind when it came to Harriet.
She knew of his disdain for her, he was sure. She glanced back at him. “You men can go charging off across the countryside with no plan or order,” she said derisively. “But I rather think that young Edith can help us here.”
HARRIET GOT AS FAR as the gate. She realised as she was halfway down the driveway that a five-mile walk in her indoor clothing was ludicrous but then she had always prided herself on challenging convention where necessary. Indeed, it was one of the things she adored about her husband, the bishop. She knew that people mocked her for always referring to his job title rather than his name, but they would surely mock her even more if they knew that she also called him that in her own head, too. Yet she saw it as a mark of her utter devotion and respect for him. He, too, took as unconventional a line as he could, while remaining totally bounds to the teachings of the Church that he served. But he questioned everything, returning always to the source of all knowledge, and deferring to no mortal in his quest for truth. He argued a great deal with Harriet, and they both loved it, because the arguments were about real things, meaningful things, passionate things. They never bickered over small stuff; who cared whether a knife was left in the jam jar, still sticky with butter and toast crumbs, when one’s very soul was threatened by important questions about life, truth, death and forgiveness? Such was the very root of Harriet’s outward rejection of some social conventions. All they signified was window-dressing of the shallowest kind.