“Well, somebody did.” Maddie held up the sheets of her report side by side for TD to image. “I don’t know if Lady Sarah or Sir Ambrose can shoot, or the Professor.”
“Jones can. He gave an exhibition off the rear platform on the voyage to England. Hiram said he clipped a playing card at twenty paces in a sea wind. And he shot out the left lens of the second mate’s goggles, while they were on his hat. Scorched the hat, but not the hair beneath it. Drunk as a hound, he was.”
“Fine shooting indeed. But was he anywhere near Cornwall when Baron Bodmin died?” She clipped the papers together at the corner and shook out her skirts. “I’ve got to give Hornblower this report right away. Can TC send a copy back to Madame for insurance?”
“Sure thing. I know you too well to think you won’t go prowling around in the dark again, so send TD up to our airship if you run into trouble, and I’ll jump to your rescue.”
“As if I need you to rescue me.” Maddie grinned. “Which of us untangled who from that cargo net over Cape Town?”
“One little misstep,” said Obie, unabashed. “Mind your step with Lady Sarah. Madame said she’s been ruthless, although never killed anyone that the family could discover.”
“She’ll stay in her room for sure now, rather than risk being spotted by Mrs. Midas-White, her ex-employer.”
Maddie’s confidence was misplaced. In search of Hercule Hornblower, she found the lady of the house in the library, making polite conversation with Mrs. Midas-White over a tea tray. She stopped in the doorway, stunned to silence by a morass of conflicting emotions at the sight of the woman she had pursued so far from Shepheard’s Hotel. Both ladies glanced up, but neither gave any sign of previous acquaintance. Indeed, they appeared to regard each other as strangers too. Curious, if they had worked together over the winter. Likely Sarah had been using some other name then, and perhaps they had not met in person.
Colonel Muster, Professor Plumb, and Sir Ambrose were standing around with teacups, rigid with the discomfort of gentlemen who would rather be elsewhere but can think of no acceptable excuse to flee. Or, in this case, nowhere to flee to, with the library occupied by ladies. Doubly thankful for the precaution that had placed her secretarial oculus firmly over her eye, and for the purple straight hair that had replaced her brown, wavy Cairo coiffeur, Maddie backed out of the room very quickly indeed.
The housekeeper was busy shaking out the little parlour, presumably for the ladies’ later use. No retreat there. Hornblower, the footman told her, was in the dining room, having demanded afternoon coffee by himself. She presented the report, snatched a cream bun to make up for refusing the Shad at luncheon, and hurried upstairs with no idea what she would, or could, say when next she was faced with her duplicitous hostess.
Huddled in her coverlet by the cold hearth in her chamber, she listened to the conversations TD had managed to record during his hours in the library on the previous evening.
While Hornblower remained in the room, the talk had been mostly by him. Not questioning his more-or-less captive subjects, but, as usual, talking about himself. A shameless dropper of famous names, he claimed credit for the return of this peer’s diamonds and another’s kidnapped heir, that merchant’s defalcating accountant and this one’s overdue steamship. Once he was gone, however, the tenor of the evening shifted. The men’s voices came through with intermittent clarity, as they paced the room or moved between their chairs and the drinks cart.
Sir Ambrose was shrill. “She’s come to take my entire inheritance. If there’s any valuable books or curios, we must hide them. Professor, what’s the most valuable?”
Professor Plumb, sounding weary, and maybe a little drunk. “Nothing in this dust-heap is worth a plugged farthing.”
The pair explored that theme to the point of tedium before Plumb, losing patience, snapped, “If you want to know where his money went, ask Muster. Same place as the pile he won from you, I shouldn’t wonder. Once a gambler, always a gambler.”
“I didn’t gamble with Bodmin. He was my friend.” The colonel couldn’t be bothered to sound offended.
Sir Ambrose made up for it. “You wouldn’t win his money but you would mine? So I’m not your friend? I should throw you out of my house then.”
“It’s not yours until the estate’s settled, little rooster. As the executor, I control that timeline. Behave, or you’ll wait a long time.”
Plumb was not buying that. “You mean, you’re in no rush to settle the estate because you’ve already made off with the money. Hah. I told him you were not to be trusted. But would he listen?”
“Fool. He had hardly tuppence when he left. Everything had gone on his previous expeditions; only the White woman’s support made the last one possible.” Muster yawned. “I recall you getting a winter vacation at her expense. What did you do to earn it?”
“I won’t sit here being insulted. I am going to bed.” Wavering footsteps were followed by a door shutting.
Sir Ambrose groaned. “She’s suing the estate for all that money back. I don’t have it; you say the estate doesn’t have it. What will happen to us? How will I live?”
“Your wife had some pretty jewels. Are they up the spout already?”
“She won’t let me near them. Hid them somewhere as soon as we arrived. And that’s not the only thing she’s been cunning about. She was incognito in Venice so her father wouldn’t find out she was at Carnivale, but now she says she’s estranged from Main-Bearing and won’t see another penny from him.”
Maddie flinched. If Lord Main-Bearing heard of his supposed daughter’s marriage to that wastrel, there’d be stormy weather ahead. The speedy marriage was understandable from both sides now: Sarah wanted a quick change of names and a chance at whatever the baron might bring back from his expedition, and Ambrose wanted a rich wife in a hurry, having lost his fortune at cards. A lucky escape for sweet Clarice.
Colonel Muster’s voice drew her back to the recorded conversation. “And you were fool enough to marry her. Under her right name, I suppose? No getting out of it without annoying the Steamlord.” There was a clink of glassware as one or the other freshened a drink. Then Muster continued. “The lawsuit against the estate can’t proceed until the old lady’s lawyers serve the papers. They must be served to me, since I’m the executor, until I’m declared dead. Right now nobody in London knows where I am. But there’s a risk that fat detective will mention me in a report, and then the game’s up.”
Had Maddie mentioned Colonel Muster in the report she had just handed to Hornblower? She thought not. That one dealt with the baron’s airship and his body. And, of course, the photograph showing the mask had been in the manor at some point. Did the arrogant airship magnate not realize that the impediment to her lawsuit, the vanished executor, was the same colonel who had drunk tea with her this very afternoon? Possibly not, for the quarrelsome Mrs. Midas-White might have any number of legal actions against any number of persons, and likely had teams of lawyers to handle such details for her. Should Maddie tell her? Not yet, she decided. A good investigative reporter did not reveal information merely to see ill-doers punished, but observed from the fringes while the subjects revealed even more of their secrets.
Tonight she would slip TD back into the library. Or into the parlour, if there was a chance the ladies might sit there after dinner. Perhaps leaving him in the parlour overnight would reveal whatever Lady Sarah was searching for, and save Maddie a night’s lost sleep.
When the gong rang for dinner, she re-fixed the oculus and went down, hoping Lady Sarah had once again taken to her bed. She had not, but presided from the foot of the table. There was more conversation tonight, mainly from Professor Plumb and Colonel Muster, seated on either side of Mrs. Midas-White and doing their best to hold her attention. Plumb even gave up his post-prandial brandy to escort her to the ladies’ parlour. Maddie and Lady Sarah followed them across the hall. There had been no sign from the latter that she recognized Maddie or paid her any notice, which was al
l to the good as far as Maddie was concerned. She settled herself at the small table in the parlour, not as close to the hearth as she might have liked but out of immediate notice and apt, she hoped, to be forgotten while others talked freely.
She heard nothing of value, however, merely Professor Plumb boasting. To hear him tell it, White Sky passengers had flocked to his lectures during his trans-Atlantic crossing last fall. Was he angling for an invitation to return to America on one of Mrs. Midas-White’s ships? Just why did he feel the need to leave England again so soon? To escape culpability in the baron’s death, or to sell a purloined Nubian mask in the vast, anonymous marketplace across the ocean? Both?
Colonel Muster soon abandoned the dining room too. He talked of petty thieves hiring onto airship crews for the easy pickings, daring jewel robberies on trans-Atlantic flights, and cardsharps preying upon young men lulled into false security by the small world of an airship. Mrs. Midas-White found nothing to query in his last assertion. If she did not know of his recent disgrace over gambling, it was another morsel of evidence that she had not acquainted herself with the details of the baron’s estate. And yet she might, in any missive, mention the name to her lawyers. The colonel was taking a frightful risk by being in the same house. But then, a gambler must enjoy risks. When his oratory touched on the need for trained security forces on airship liners it was clear he was angling for a job with the White Sky Line. Such an occupation would pay him to live in the air, allowing time and distance to dim the memory of his scandalous ejection from his club.
Something crashed through the library window, bringing the parlour party to an abrupt end. While everyone else crowded to the connecting door, Maddie slipped out to the hall and hurried to the library doorway. A small, water-stained trunk lay in a spray of shattered glass and splintered casement. Surely that was the trunk from the Coast Guard Station? Sir Ambrose shoved past her into the room just as a man with a pistol in his hand clambered in through the hole.
“Where’s that poltroon, Plumb?” Professor Windsor Jones, drenched and disheveled almost beyond recognition. “Plumb! Come out here and answer for your crime.” Maddie tore her eyes from the weapon long enough to glance at the crowd by the other door. No Plumb. Jones charged at that door, his gun hand wavering wildly. “Where is that paltry pundit? Let me at him!”
Colonel Muster stepped forward. “You’re drunk. Put that toy down and stop scaring the ladies.”
“Toy?” Professor Jones stopped. “I’ll show you what this toy can do.” He whipped around. There was a loud pop. The painting of old Lady Bodmin above the hearth tumbled top over toes onto the floor, ending with the lady’s aged head in the flames and the rest of her leaning on the grate.
“Granny!” Sir Ambrose leapt forward and dragged the portrait out of the fire, smacking at the cinders that came along. Jones made for the gap left by the upset heir, pushing past Maddie to reach the hall.
“Aha!” He bolted toward the staircase. Plumb was halfway up, huffing and holding the railing as he climbed. Jones leveled the gun. Maddie cannoned into his back, sending him staggering. The shot popped. A chunk of the newel post fell away. Jones tripped over his long coattail and fell face down, his gun flying from his hand. Maddie fell over him. Above them, Professor Plumb stumbled. Thuds and truncated wails announced his progress down the stairs.
As Maddie caught her breath, Jones coughed, sending a cloud of brandy fumes into her face. She coughed too, and scrambled away as best she could, hampered by her long, narrow skirt. Her hand came down on the pistol. She shoved it into her side pocket and kept going until her back fetched up against the newel post. Jones crawled toward her. She clutched the first thing that came to her fingers—a shattered half of the post’s carved pineapple—and threw it at his face. It missed by a good margin, and he came on.
Colonel Muster planted a foot on Jones’ hand. “Stop now, man, or I’ll crush your fingers. You’ll never pen another cockamamie conspiracy theory.”
Jones wilted.
“I think he’s drunk.” Maddie attempted to organize her skirt and stand up without revealing the weight of the weapon dragging her pocket down. She was only partly successful, but nobody noticed. Those now daring to venture out of the library were rushing to Professor Plumb, who had crumpled on the lowest landing.
“I perish,” he groaned. “The fiend has given me a mortal wound.”
“Get up, you silly man. You fell down the stairs,” Mrs. Midas-White told him. “You. Footman. Take him to the library.” The morose fellow did as he was bid, hoisting the prostrate professor by an arm with no regard for possible broken bones. He plunked Plumb into an armchair, and Maddie handed back the fez that had tumbled lightly from the half-landing to the hall floor with only a stripe of dusty spider-web to show for its wild flight.
Sir Ambrose, having tenderly dusted off his Granny’s face with an antimacassar, leaned her against the wall and poured out a stiff brandy. Mrs. Midas-White snatched it from his hand and pushed it at Professor Plumb.
“Drink that and pull yourself together.”
Colonel Muster dragged Professor Jones into the room and flung him at the sofa. “Explain yourself, sir.”
“He stole my trunk. He gave it to Baron Bodmin to find the Eye of Africa. That was my research.” Jones pointed dramatically at the trunk. “It’s all in there. It was with the baron when he drowned.”
Maddie frowned. How had he retrieved the trunk from the coroner’s boathouse? How had he known it was there at all?
Jones rambled on. “All mine. When I saw the baron came ashore with a trunk, it was mine. I knew it.”
Of course, that image of the baron and the trunk had been in all the newspapers a week ago. Plenty of time for even a drunk American to find out where Cornwall was and get himself there. She hoped he had not shot anyone in stealing it back.
“Stole it, did you?” Colonel Muster abandoned his guard pose over Jones and slung the trunk up to his shoulder. “It’s evidence now. I’ll lock it up until the Coast Guard arrives to claim it.” He strode toward the hall door, danced a short minuet with Hercule Hornblower, who had belatedly decided to investigate the commotion, and headed for the stairs. Dashing up them two at a time, he vanished from Maddie’s line of sight amid the cobwebs and gloom of the upper flight.
Silence fell, thick as the settling dust. A movement near the shattered window could have been the wind touching the drapery, but it was Obie, looking in from the darkness, his eyebrows raised in a question. Maddie rolled her eyes back at him. She had not needed his help with the drunken gunman, and if she had, there would have been no time to send for him. And what were they to do with Jones? Lock him in a bedroom to sleep it off? Send for the Coast Guard to take him away?
A log popped in the hearth, startling her. She looked around. Lady Sarah stood by the parlour door, beautiful in her pallor, staring at the wreckage of the paneling above the hearth. Mrs. Midas-White sat by the fire, gazing narrow-eyed at the two professors in turn, clicking her brass claws together. Sir Ambrose poured out another brandy and guzzled it. Hornblower preened his moustaches by the hall door. Colonel Muster was doubtless searching the trunk for the Eye of Africa. He was the baron’s executor, after all, and who had a better right to secure it? Except it wasn’t in the trunk, as Maddie well knew. And the Coast Guard was satisfied that nobody had interfered with the contents when the trunk and body were found. If it had not gone overboard with the baron from his airship, the mask must still be in the manor. Perhaps in this very room.
She looked at Lady Sarah again. All that time spent canoodling with Baron Bodmin in Cairo; had he whispered of hiding places in his distant home, for which she was searching? Tonight TD would be charged to follow that industrious trickster around. If she found anything, Maddie wanted to know about it.
A shrill ululation split the air. Sir Ambrose dropped his glass. Lady Sarah gasped. Professor Plumb floundered upright and slid to the carpet instead. Professor Jones yawned, snorted, and turned his fa
ce to the back of the sofa. Mrs. Midas-White blew again on a silver whistle, her waxen cheeks reddening with the effort. Soon several pairs of feet came tramping down the stairs and across the hall. An officer from her airship led a contingent of crewmen into the library. The lady pointed at Jones.
“Take that man to my brig. I will speak to him in the morning, when he is sober.”
“You can’t do that,” said Sir Ambrose. “The bounder shot up my granny. Call for the constabulary.”
“He knows something about the mask. I intend to have it.” Mrs. Midas-White’s eyes opened full upon him, gray rimmed in black. “Unless you can pay me its value tonight.” Not waiting for her hapless host’s response, she told her officer, “A small White Sky trunk was taken upstairs by Colonel Muster. Find him and take the trunk to my ship.”
She left the library, her spike heels rapping on the stones of the hall floor and her claws rasping on the banister as she took to the stairs. Her men slung Professor Jones bodily from the sofa and followed in a neat phalanx with him swinging insensate between them.
Hornblower shuddered. “These so-horrible people. Hercule Hornblower must bring an end before someone else is imperiled. Record all you know,” he told Maddie. “Or have guessed, or suspect, about the baron’s involvement with all these crétins.” He advanced on the brandy decanter, poured the dregs into his glass, and added, “Bring it to me here. Tonight. And send the footman with another bottle, pour aider the grey cells.”
Leaving Lady Sarah to minister to Professor Plumb, who had regained his chair amid piteous groaning, Maddie went upstairs. Professor Jones’ pistol bumped against her thigh with every step. What had possessed her to take it, and keep it? Surely it would be better turned over to someone accustomed to firearms? In her chamber, she removed the weapon from her pocket and contemplated it. Then something tapped on her window.
She dropped the gun. Fortunately, it landed on the coverlet. Obie jumped into the room and snatched it as it slid toward the edge of the lumpy bed. He popped the cylinder out sideways and tilted it over his hand. A half-dozen empty cartridges tumbled out.
Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond Page 11