“That’s better. You knew nothing of shooting when we last met. Where’d you pick up this pistol?”
“I still know nothing,” Maddie snapped. “It’s Professor Jones’. I took it after he tried to shoot Professor Plumb.”
“You took it?” Obie shook his head. “Wish I’d seen that. You need a minder, girl.”
“I do not! I managed quite well on my own.” Her temper easing, Maddie added, “Although I would have been in difficulties if Colonel Muster had not stopped Jones coming after me.”
“I dare not imagine. He’ll be in Mrs. Midas-White’s brig tonight, so you’ll be safe enough. Remind me to teach you to shoot, though, next time we have a few days together.”
“She really has a brig on a little ship like that?”
“On every ship. A law unto herself, that woman. Will she get the mask, do you think, from grilling Windy Jones?”
“Windy?”
“Short for Windsor. Or something else, if you believe Hiram about the stench in his cabin after a night of hard drinking.” Obie flopped onto the bed. “Some exciting night, huh? So fill me in.”
“I can’t. I really must write up a report for Mr. Hornblower. He said to include everything I know, guess, or suspect. He’ll take all the glory if my information leads to him solving the baron’s murder.” Maddie stamped her foot. “It always happens that way. I do the work and some man takes the credit.”
“If you take it yourself, someone will put your picture on the aetherwire news. And if you think your father will be fooled by hair dye and an oculus, however fetching it is . . .”
“No, you’re right.” Maddie slumped onto a chair. “I’ll write up everything, and let him have the credit. Except I’ll also send articles off to CJ for the morning edition. I forgot before supper to send the one about the baron being shot rather than drowning. Now I can do one about Professor Jones bursting in too. Could you get them over to the Inn for telegraphing tonight?”
“No problem. We’ve got a heli-cycle aboard for messenger runs. A night flight across the moors will be cake. Unless I get lost, that is.” Obie yawned. “I’ll just have a nap until you’re ready.”
Maddie pulled out her notebook, telegraph forms, and pen. As she settled down to work, she realized TD was still sitting silent in her pocket. She pulled him out.
“I’m going to sneak down and set TD on Lady Sarah for tonight. Where’s TC?”
“Left him on the library windowsill to record events there. Could be handy.”
“You’re a pal.” Maddie slipped down the stairs again and, seeing candlelight from the little parlour, went that way. As she’d hoped, it was empty. Lady Sarah’s voice came from the library, coaxing Professor Plumb to drink up and let Ambrose help him to bed. Maddie pocketed a couple of extra candles, set TD on a shelf among knickknacks, and said softly, “TD, at your discretion. Look and listen to Lady Sarah, wherever she goes, until I come back for you.”
Obie was fast asleep, head askew and mouth open. Maddie lit a second candle and got down to work, writing hard and fast for CJ’s morning edition, and a slower, careful summary for Hercule Hornblower, with a separate sheet as a timeline of all the suspects’ known movements. After all, she knew quite a lot about these crétins, first from Egypt, then from the Kettle papers, and now from her own observations. How much of it would come as a surprise to the great detective? Had he an inkling at all that Lady Sarah, the new bride, was the same woman who had run off with the jewels the baron had ordered “on approval” in Cairo? Who did he think had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to kill the baron?
While she wrote for him, she pondered for herself. The mask could not have been found with the baron, or the guilty party would not remain at Bodmin Manor. Was it Lady Sarah? Could a lady so dainty manipulate the baron’s body out of his airship, and abandon ship with sufficient skill as to be unscathed? Where was her husband during that episode? It was impossible to see the hapless Sir Ambrose as a co-conspirator. He was too guileless by half to keep such a secret. And was Lady Sarah sufficiently ruthless? She had not been known to kill before. That did not mean she had not, merely that she’d not been found out.
Mrs. Midas-White? Definitely ruthless. If she had the mask, though, she’d be long gone back to America, paying no further heed to the baron or his paltry estate. And she would not be so quick to snatch the drunken Professor Jones.
So much for the women in the case. Now for the men:
Sir Ambrose: too foolish to act alone. If he’d snuck off from Paris to kill the baron, he would have made a mull of the body’s disposal. Unless he’d fired the fatal shot and his very clever wife had orchestrated the rest, to cover up the crime. Could Ambrose keep from babbling such doings to the other men when he was, as so often, deep in drink?
Professor Plumb might have wanted the mask for himself, but it was difficult to picture the indolent academic undertaking the effort to dispose of the body and the trunk—which was, to be sure, evidence that could discredit him with his peers by proving Jones’ accusations. As for leaping from an airship over either water or land . . . the mind boggled.
Professor Jones. If he’d caught up to Baron Bodmin and found the trunk, he might have killed with a single shot. But he would never have thrown his precious research overboard. If he hadn’t seen the trunk, he had no motive for the killing. Except to take the mask, if by some strange chance he’d heard about it immediately on the baron’s brief return to England. If he’d seen the mask, he would have taken it, and likely fled to America by the first ship, not hung around getting into drunken rages over his lost work. And he would have taken his research with him.
Who did that leave? Colonel Muster. Again, sufficiently ruthless. As a military man, he could shoot, unless whatever kept him in dark lenses had damaged his eyesight. He had experience in airships, and she had seen him with her own eyes plummeting from the sky under a frail canopy. He needed money. But did he gain anything by the baron’s death? Not obviously, not unless he happened upon the mask. Which he had not found or why seize the water-stained trunk? He had known enough, however, to chance looking for the prize there.
Frustrated by the mass of possibilities, Maddie put the final period to her report with such emphasis that the nib went through the page. Using greater care, she coded her telegrams for CJ and shook Obie awake.
“Off you go for your midnight heli-cycle tour of the moors, dear fellow.”
Obie sat up, stretching. “May I look?”
She handed him the timeline. “Do you see anything amiss with this?”
He yawned and angled the page to catch the light. “In December, all your suspects were in Cairo except Ambrose, who was presumably in London making eyes at little Clarice?” She nodded. “After Christmas, the baron flew off to the desert, and Plumb and Muster returned to England. Seems straight enough. Lady Sarah—ah, that’s interesting; she stayed in Cairo under a different name for a whole month, communicating with Mrs. Midas-White. Arguing over the next steps or . . .?”
“Or hatching a new scheme for when the baron returned,” said Maddie. “Nobody knew then that he would not be coming back.”
“A fair point. For whatever reason, she flies off to Venice using your name, drops it soon after arrival, then picks it up in mid-March, when she boards the airship with Sir Ambrose and gets married en route to Paris. As you.” He grinned as Maddie let out a vexed huff. “I should hope you have better taste. They could have gone off to murder his uncle from there, if he let them know he was passing over.”
“Except he brought the mask to Cornwall,” said Maddie. “Why go all the way back to Paris? To meet the new bride?”
“Surprise for him if he did, given their previous association. I suspect even idle Ambrose would not remain married to his uncle’s mistress. Or not without a lot of money in her future. Now to mid-April, when the airship was found adrift. The colonel was either in London or not when it was found, and the baron is deemed to have gone into the sea between th
en and the sighting two weeks earlier over the Suez Canal. No more definite time than that?”
“The coroner could not be sure how long he was in the water, due to those schools of Shad picking the bones.” She shuddered. “For the crucial two weeks, we have no independent accounting for the colonel’s or either professor’s whereabouts. Or Mrs. Midas-White’s, come to that.”
“Madame’s minions can be on the job by morning. I’ll send her a message.” He folded the telegraph forms, tucked them into his jacket, and scrambled out the window. She latched the casement after him and hurried down to submit her report.
Hercule Hornblower had remained in the library with the other men. Maddie loitered in the hall before going in, unabashedly listening. Sir Ambrose whined about his wife’s lack of money and attention. Colonel Muster interjected cutting comments. Hornblower recounted yet another incident in his fabulous series of detecting triumphs. All as usual. She walked into the room, presented the papers tidily clipped in order, and retreated, only to slip into the parlour from the hall entrance.
TD was still there, peering from behind a standing picture frame. She asked him to speak but nothing came out. Since it was unlikely anyone here—save perhaps Obie—had any idea how to reset his mechanism, she had to assume Lady Sarah had not yet returned to this room. After a moment to wonder if Obie had called TC away from the library windowsill as he flew away, she moved TD to the mantle. It was close to the library door. If Lady Sarah went to search the library tonight, he could listen, and maybe get into a position to see what occurred.
Chapter Sixteen
THE NIGHT WAS uneventful. On her way down to breakfast, Maddie found TD where she had left him, although turned slightly into the parlour and covered with more dust than she might have expected from a single night here. Fresh dust had been sifted onto the mantle too. The housekeeper had surely wiped it when turning out the room just yesterday. Odd. Maybe all the heavy men running up and down the stairs last night had shifted something in the ceiling. She peered upward, but the morning light from the hall was insufficient to show anything untoward amid the cobwebs. The young girl above the fireplace peered down sweetly with her painted eyes. Whatever fell on the mantle had not dimmed her new-dusted surface. Curious.
Footsteps passed in the hall as she was about to command TD to speak. Then the breakfast gong sounded and she hurried out, leaving him where he now blended in so well. There was still a chance Lady Sarah would return to that parlour after breakfast and say or do something incriminating.
At the table, Hornblower announced, “I, Hercule Hornblower, am ready to reveal all about the mysterious death of the baron of Bodmin Manor. You will all gather in the library immediately after breakfast or expose your own guilt. Footman,” he bellowed as that surly fellow came in with a fresh pot of steaming cocoa, “take a message to Madame Midas-White. She must bring her prisoner to the library in thirty minutes if she desires answers.”
Nobody ate much breakfast. Maddie, picking at her kedgeree and bacon, saw preoccupation on some faces, anxiety elsewhere, a lowered brow there, and of course the bruises on Professor Plumb’s face from his tumble down the stairs. But nothing she could definitively say was guilt. At the conclusion of the allotted time, they all followed the great detective into the library. She settled closest to the hall door and opened her notebook, looking unobtrusively for Obie’s little sparrow on the windowsill. He was not to be seen. What recording was done would be TD’s alone, from his station inside the parlour door. It was far from ideal.
Lady Sarah sat far off by the parlour door. Her husband paced before the fire. Colonel Muster took the desk chair. When Mrs. Midas-White entered, she chose the sofa facing the grate, beside Professor Plumb, while Professor Windy Jones, escorted by two burly crewmen, slouched between the two tall windows. One of these people had almost surely killed Baron Bodmin, but Maddie still was not sure which. Hercule Hornblower set himself in the corner by the hearth, effectively displacing Sir Ambrose. The latter leaned against a bookshelf near the colonel and crossed his arms uneasily over his scrawny chest.
“Good people,” said Hornblower grandly, “some of you were friends of the dead man, others his relations. One was his enemy implacable, and this person, I say to you, is in this room today.” He went on in this vein for some minutes, his hands dancing for emphasis, without mentioning a single relevant detail. Maddie wondered if he’d read her notes, or fallen asleep. For that matter, would he fall asleep in the midst of his exposition?
As Maddie watched her employer, something beyond his head caught her eye. The picture of Sir Ambrose’s granny, with the morning sun full upon it, was propped on the mantle, its shot-split wire coiled at its side. Above it, a neat hole could now be seen in the dark paneling. Ah, that was the source of the dust in the parlour. The bullet from Professor Jones’ gun had passed through that wire last evening, straight into the paneling and out to the parlour, bringing mortar dust and wood splinters with it. Surely that was what had coated TD where he sat. Or had she moved him to that spot after the shooting? She replayed the events of the evening but could not be certain.
“To continue,” Hornblower announced. One of his plump hands dropped to his waistcoat. The other pointed directly at his employer.
“Madame Midas-White,” he roared at her. “Did you or did you not know the research that guided Baron Bodmin on his travels was in fact stolen? Did you kill the baron to gain that treasure? Or, when he refused to either give you the mask or repay your money, did you shoot him of your vengeance?”
Mrs. Midas-White glared at him, her brass claws clicking. “In England, I can sue you for making such an accusation.”
“Hercule Hornblower accused nobody, merely asked the question: Did you kill Baron Bodmin?”
“I’d have made a better job of it. Get on, man. Who is the killer? Who stole my mask?”
Hornblower’s chubby digit moved on. “Professor Plumb. You stole the research into the Eye of Africa mask from Professor Windy Jones, is it not so? Did you come to Bodmin Manor, not to catalogue the library for your friend’s estate, but to claim your share of the treasure? Did you kill him when he refused to split the proceeds? Or did he threaten to reveal your theft and see you ejected from your university? Did you kill the Baron Bodmin?”
“Me? But . . . no!” Plumb sat up, miraculously forgetting all his injuries. “It was still term time when his airship appeared. Anyway, Bodmin would have told me the story of his adventures. Me, recorded for all the newssheets with the Eye of Africa in my hands? My fortune as a traveling lecturer would have been assured.” Plumb sank back on the sofa, groaning from pain or the shattered dream of glory.
The pointing finger moved on. “Colonel Cardsharp, er, Muster. You were the oldest friend and the trustee of Baron Bodmin, and you had fled London several days before his airship was found adrift. Did you, being desperately short of money and about to be cast out of your regiment, kill your old friend for the treasure he may have brought back from Africa?”
Colonel Muster said nothing. The dark lenses gave away nothing. After staring at him for a moment, Hornblower waved a pudgy hand at the distant windows.
“Professor Windsor Jones. You lost your research, the product of many years’ labour. You were laughed out of Oxford. You were betrayed by a comrade in academe and beaten to the treasure and the undoubted fame that would rightfully have been yours. Did you come here to confront the baron and kill him in a fit of your undoubted American temper?”
Jones leaped forward, cursing incoherently, and the two crewmen grabbed his arms. As he struggled, Maddie could just make out Obie beyond the window, half-concealed in the ivy. When he caught Maddie’s gaze, he pointed emphatically upward, mouthing something. She shrugged confusion. He pulled TC out of his jacket pocket and made a sign like a question mark in the air. Maddie pointed to the parlour, where TD remained on his lonely vigil. Obie grimaced, poked a finger at the parlour and then repeated the emphatic “up”. He vanished. The ivy shook. He w
as climbing it, but to what purpose? Did he want her to retrieve TD and send him to the roof?
With Jones subdued, Hornblower faced Sir Ambrose. “You, sir. Perennial financial distress is your lot. You gambled away your own fortune to Colonel Muster—and nobody would blame you for wanting to murder him, if you had done so. Your hope of marrying another fortune was dashed by a woman’s guile. Did you kill your uncle to inherit his estate and his new African treasure?”
The heir flattened against the bookcase. “You can’t say that. Sarah, tell them we weren’t here then. It’s not true!”
“Yes, we come to Lady Peacock,” said Hornblower, smoothing his moustaches with both index fingers as he gazed out over his audience. “That loveliest of liars. She tried to induce the baron to take her with him on his treasure hunt. When that failed, she lured his feckless heir into marrying her instead, that she might come to the treasure by another route. Did she sneak away to Bodmin Manor to silence the baron before he could reveal to his nephew her true nature?”
At that he spun, and the attention of the room whirled with him. “What do you say, Lady Peacock?”
The chair by the parlour door was empty.
Chapter Seventeen
“LADY PEACOCK? WHERE is that woman?”
“Sarah!” wailed Sir Ambrose.
“She’s the killer,” yelled Colonel Muster. “I knew she couldn’t be trusted.” He rushed to the parlour door. Maddie slipped out to the hall. The devious widow/wife/imposter had escaped while the struggle with Windy Jones distracted everyone. That must have been what Obie had tried to tell her. But how?
Obie had been pointing upward. Maddie ran up the main stairs, along the gallery to the attic stairs and thus to the roof stair. As she burst into the bright Cornish morning, a shadow passed overhead. The White Sky airship was coming in to moor. Where had it been? And what was that rapidly vanishing blob on the horizon? She put her hand up to shield her eyes.
Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond Page 12