by Joan Smith
“I was not working alone, Sir Ludwig! I clearly had an accomplice or two.”
“I wish you will be sensible and help me figure this thing out,” he said brusquely, refusing to recognize the obvious.
“You’re very much mistaken if you think I consider it a joking matter.”
“All right then, let us discuss it rationally. Miss Grafton is missing, assumed kidnapped. She was accompanied by an unknown woman calling herself a companion, calling herself Miss Smith. That name is very likely not her own. It is the first name chosen for an alias.”
“Yes, but don’t you see? If her reference checked out, then she either is really Miss Smith, and probably innocent, or her ex-employer is in on the hoax as well.”
“That’s right!” he beamed. “Now we’re getting somewhere. It is pretty farfetched that a perfectly respectable ex-employer of Miss Smith is involved in a vile scheme with an ex-employee. Why should a decent woman behave so? So Miss Smith is probably a victim in the thing, along with Miss Grafton. So if that’s who you are, you are no kidnapper at least.”
Now that we had established Miss Smith in a semblance of respectability in this arbitrary fashion, I was allowed to be she. “It still doesn’t explain my clothing, or what I was doing getting off the stage in the middle of nowhere.”
“They might have drugged you. Whoever kidnapped Miss Grafton had you to contend with—no small problem. They doped you enough to make you groggy, put you on the stage, and in a stupor you stumbled off when you began to come to. Your memory was gone.”
“That seems a very temporary way to have dealt with me. Who was to say I would lose my memory? It doesn’t explain my clothing, either.”
“They needed a good warm fur-lined cape for the Grafton girl—it was December, and with a longish trip planned . . .”
“I thought that part of Morley’s story particularly absurd. And would they have taken my blue suit, too? What about those black shoes, half an inch too long, so unsuitable to an elegant fur-lined cape as well.”
All my objections began to form a wedge in his credulity. “Does it seem plausible to you you might have been a companion? I must confess it is not the background I envisaged for you when first we met.”
“It doesn’t feel at all like me, but then Miss Smith is a strange creature. She didn’t dress like a hired companion, and I doubt she acted like one either. Even her getting herself the post when the man who ought to have been hiring her was away makes her sound very bossy and intrusive, and you must own I am not unlike that. She wormed her way into the young Grafton girl’s good graces.” And had not I been at pains to wind Abigail around my thumb?
“No,” he said firmly, having leapt to another unfounded conclusion. “You were right in saying you are not seventeen, and I am right in saying you are not some ten years older. You are neither Miss Grafton nor Miss Smith. So we shall cease calling you by those names, Rose.”
“Oh dear; I suppose I am Rose Trelawney again, am I?”
“Why not? It’s a nice romantical name, as Annie said, and you become more romantical by the day. I wonder what we will find out about you next.”
“We haven’t found out a single, solitary thing yet.”
“We have found out you’re not Miss Grafton and decided you are not Miss Smith. I have found out a few other things as well,” he added with a quite unnecessary note of derision in the last sentence. Then he stuck his monocle in his eye, and found out I was not beneath telling him to kindly remove it, or I would walk the rest of the way home.
Chapter Seven
I perhaps gave you too grand an idea of Granhurst by mentioning a similarity to Schloss Ludwigsburg. It was only that the front of the entire building belonging to Kessler bore some intentional resemblance to the corps-de-logis of the original. There were no pavilions attached, certainly nothing in the nature of the luxurious game-room or Jagdpavillion, no enclosed courtyard in which one might with ease parade an infantry division as at Ludwigsburg. It was not of such imperial proportions. In fairness to Sir Ludwig, I must confess that I searched in vain too for a replica of that debauched cabinet d’amour designed for Duke Eberhard Ludwig, with its shocking nudes done in bas-relief and all those mirrors in strategic places. The ancestors of Sir Ludwig were too English for that, or their wives were.
Due to my arriving at the place in December, I got about the parks and gardens very little. They were still ankle-deep in wet snow and not attractive in that season, but there was one feature I intended to investigate, snow or not. This was a chapel. I thought when first I espied it from Abigail’s room that Granhurst was built on the ruins of some older home, but it was not the case. The chapel was not what remained of some abbey or castle; it was a folly built by the second owner to lend the place a touch of class and give it a spurious air of history. I was curious to see what sort of a mess it was inside. I envisioned some duplicate of the bad taste to be found within the walls of the home proper.
As I was treated in every way as quite an honored guest, though to be sure one who had hurled at her head with monotonous regularity how much money she owed her host, I did not feel myself to be encroaching to ask Sir Ludwig if I might see the place. I did not ask him on the same day as we went to meet Mr. Morley. We were all too busy discussing the niche I might hold in the case for the thought to enter my head. The next day the weather turned quite bad again. We were fearing a repeat of the blizzard of two weeks before, and Sir Ludwig put off his trip to Gillingham on that account. I was quite simply amazed when he refused to let me see the chapel.
“Not now,” was his reply, expressed with a certain impatience. “I’m busy, Rose.”
“I didn’t mean to ask you to accompany me. I wanted only to get the key, that I might have a look around for myself,” I explained.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t,” was his unrevealing answer. German!
“Have you got something to hide?”
“Yes. You.”
He had been curt enough the last day that I did not press the matter further. He seemed preoccupied, worried. Since the visit with Mr. Morley, in fact, I had been treated with a certain brusqueness at definite odds with my former treatment. It seemed Sir Ludwig had taken the idea that as I was not a missing heiress, I was indeed her kidnapper. He had hotly denied it, but a cooler consideration had given rise to doubts. He feared he was entertaining a criminal, and his eagerness to get over to Gillingham without me to check it out made him irascible. A dozen times he cursed the falling snow, with a quite careless disregard for the presence of three females. He was snappish not only with me but with Annie and Abigail as well. Nor did he join us in the studio as he used to. It seemed strangely empty without him there bothering the life out of us.
It was a great relief when the next morning showed us clear skies, and no more than an inch of snow fallen, fast melting, so that the trip was at last possible. Abbie, who was a bit of a road hog, asked to go with him.
“You will want to stay and keep Rose company,” he told her.
As she obviously wanted nothing of the sort, I encouraged her to go. It would be easier to get into the chapel without her along. As if reading my mind, Sir Ludwig turned to me before leaving and said, “We’ll see the chapel tomorrow. I have the key with me. I want you to stay home and do nothing foolish.”
It was of all things he could have done and said the most likely to precipitate folly on my part. There was even an urge to break the chapellock, but of course I could not go quite that far. I must contrive other mischief. Annie undertook to amuse me in the morning, by a tour of the house. There was hardly a nook of it I had not been into already. With some interest in architecture, it was not to be supposed I had not long since got into all unlocked chambers except the master bedroom. I got in there that morning. How I longed to be at it, rearranging the furniture, stripping the yellowing paper from the walls and putting up new, removing those great heavy piec
es and putting in better ones that stood unseen and unused in bedrooms seldom occupied by any guests. In the gold guest suite on the east corner, for instance, sat a perfectly beautiful Queen Anne desk and matching chair, while the master of the house used a scratched mahogany that might have been hammered together by himself, for any aesthetic value it had. Worst of all was that I could not even chide him about it, for I had no idea of announcing what I had been doing, unless Annie blurted it out. Far from impossible, but I counted on her faulty memory.
Next we went to the attics, where I had not earlier ventured, to see that finer furnishings were stored as lumber than graced many of the saloons belowstairs. I could not bring myself to leave up in the dark a satinwood cabinet, Hepplewhite I judged from the straight legs and other details, with delicate pietra-dura panels inlaid on the front doors. “Why do you not have that pretty thing taken down to the main Saloon, Annie?” I asked her.
“Ruth never liked it,” she told me.
Ruth, I had already learned, was Abbie’s mother. She seemed a special deity of Annie’s, often quoted, so that I saw some trouble talking her into bringing it down. It was my intention to place it in lieu of the heavy Kent chest presently forming the focal point of the Saloon. Whether half a dozen stout footmen could ever get the Kent monstrosity up these narrow stairs was a moot point, but they could surely get it out of the Saloon at least, and lose it in some dark corner, of which there were many.
By a series of judicious compliments on the panels, I soon convinced her Ruth could not have had the poor taste to dislike this particular piece. It was the old Kent one in the Green Saloon Ruth detested. She was furious with Ludwig then for having defied his mother’s wishes in removing this one from below. She even set on the occasion when he had done it in spite over some detail in the woman’s will. Giving Annie five hundred pounds, I believe it was. I had to tread warily to make her see it was only forgetfulness on Ludwig’s part that had caused him to be so callous, for I didn’t want a full-scale war on my hands. I needed him in a good mood, and he hadn’t been recently. The thing was done in jig time. It was the smallness of Annie’s bequest that had triggered his anger. Kent was consigned to a corner of the study, a nice dark corner so that it need not be too frequently seen. The Hepplewhite was a vast improvement to the Saloon, except that its delicate lines and coloring rendered more jarring those hideous hunter-green draperies and more insipid the salmon-pink rug. After a few repetitions, Annie tumbled to it she was to disapprove of these two items, and before long she announced, “I shall make Lud change them. See if I don’t! The place was used to be much more stylish when Ruth was alive.”
Ruth, I assumed, must have gone to her maker some several years ago, for that carpet had been without nap for a decade.
“We’ll see if we can’t get it done in time for the New Year’s party,” she said. “A party makes a dandy excuse for a bit of trimming up. We don’t often have a party since Ruth is gone, which is why we have fallen into rack and ruin; (perhaps I ought not to have used such a strong phrase for her to repeat). But at New Year’s, at least we have a do.”
Christmas was fast approaching. It was past mid-December already, the twentieth. To get these things done by New Year’s would take fast footwork. Annie went for her nap after luncheon, and I went to the park, looking for more mischief to get into. I spotted holly bushes and greenery to be culled later for trimming the house. Before long my feet were heading to the chapel, where my heart had been directing them all along. It was set off several hundred yards from the house, in a clearing. The door was locked, but I took a good look around the exterior. Granhurst was in yellow stone, like its ancestor. The chapel was gray. There was nothing German about it. A would-be Romanesque thing it was—low, rounded windows and recessed Romanesque doorway with some not exceptional carvings decorating the curves. The door was locked, and I knew where the key was. At Gillingham. I might have trouble talking away the Hepplewhite cabinet without a smashed lock, so I abandoned thoughts of getting inside.
I strolled around to the rear, having some trouble walking in Annie’s pattens that were a good inch too short. That was where it happened, behind the chapel, well concealed from the house. I heard a sound as of bushes rustling and hurried footsteps. The bushes moving led me to suspect a dog was loose. Granhurst might have been called “Doghurst” for the number of hounds and other canines Ludwig kept. I suspect from the quantity of dog hairs to be found on sofas and padded chairs that, prior to my arrival, they might have had the run of the Saloon, and of course I already knew the spaniel’s toilet habits. The footfalls, however, were louder than those of a dog. They were human, and stealthy. Strangely enough, I felt no fear. I was often overcome with a tide of panic for no reason, but now, when reason was there, I felt only that some maid was sneaking out to meet her beau. Bess I selected for the culprit, as she was the prettiest of the household girls.
Curiosity, one of my besetting sins, urged me to confirm my suspicion. I was in no position, nor mood for that matter, to chide her, but I wished to see who she had taken for a lover that I might twit Sir Ludwig about competition. Not that he flirted with her, actually, but she was inordinately pretty and I occasionally accused him of debauching his servants as he prided himself a little on sailing a taut ship. I went along to the back of the building, in time to see a leg disappear around the corner. Bess was flying high. It was a well-polished gentleman’s boot I got a passing glimpse of.
This promised to be rather embarrassing. If some prestigious neighbor of Kessler’s was carrying on with a housemaid, I was not particularly eager to be aware of it. I stood undecided a moment, really considering how to get away without being seen. The best way was to just return to the house as though I had heard or seen nothing, and I turned around to do so. Moving at an awkward gait because of the pattens—the old-fashioned kind with metal rings—I was slow to escape. I had not quite reached the front of the chapel when I was felled by a blow from behind. Not a hard enough blow to knock me unconscious, but enough to stun me. My pursuer had moved quickly and silently to overtake me. I fell forward, but broke the fall with my hands. By the time I reached my feet again, hollering at the top of my lungs, my assailant was gone—run back behind the church and off into the spinney beyond. Much as I would have liked to see who he was, I had not the intention of going after him. I ran back to the house as fast as I could, to find my call had been unheard. Bess was busy in the Saloon polishing the cabinet we had had brought down.
She was humming happily to herself, and looking remarkably pretty in her mobcap, with her big blue eyes twinkling merrily, and her cheeks rosy. The homey aroma of turpentine and beeswax—not one too commonly smelled at Granhurst I confess sadly—was so mundane and reassuring that I knew Bess was innocent of any part in the affair. “Oh, you took a tumble, Miss Rose!” she said, looking at my bedraggled cape. “Let me take that to the kitchen to clean up for you.” I put off my bonnet and cape, and decided to say nothing of my adventure, at least to the servants.
“How fine the cabinet looks,” I complimented her. You can get a deal more work out of servants, and more happily, too, with praise than scolding.
“Sure and it’s a grand improvement over that great heavy dark box that’s stood here in times gone by. A shame it is the way we’re sinking into commonness here at Granhurst. What we need is a mistress, a proper mistress I’m meaning.” She smiled pertly at me as she made this remark.
She was usually a well-behaved girl, but I took the idea this speech was a slur on my own lack of propriety. Her meaningful little look suggested it was myself she saw as the mistress, and it seemed amazingly impertinent for her to suggest I was improper. “Miss Annie is getting that old and odd in her notions,” she rattled on, making her meaning clearer. I blushed under her knowing look, and hardly knew whether I felt more angry or foolish. To set her in her place, I suggested that as she had her rags and materials at hand, a touch of polish to the other pieces in the room would not go amiss. She took
this hint well, considering it came from a governess.
Before leaving, I decided to pose one last question to her. “Are any of the girls in this house seeing a beau, Bess, a gentleman?”
“You’re wide awake on all suits, Miss Rose. They’ve never said a word to a soul, but if Millie, the upstairs maid, hasn’t had an offer from the head groom! They’ll be making the announcement at Christmas if Sir Ludwig permits it.”
“How nice for them,” I said, “but I meant a gentleman.”
“What, a real gentry gentleman you mean? Lord, no, Miss. There’s no carry-on of that sort with us girls. Sir Ludwig takes a dim view of philandering. He’s not a hard master, but about that he is strict. Why were you asking, if I may be so bold, Miss?”
“I thought I saw a gentleman skulking about the grounds just now.”
“Isn’t that an odd thing, then? I thought the same myself as I was coming down the stairway half an hour ago. I took the idea I saw a horse cutting through the park, but as no one came to the door, I collect it was only a dog or a branch moving. Should I send some boys out to have a look, then?”
“No, he would be gone by now.”
To minimize talk and my own investigation of the church from which I had been hinted away, I said nothing to Annie either when she came down from her rest. I wore a slight bump on the back of my head. Not so large as my former egg, but no doubt Annie would have liked to see it. Unfortunately, she was mistaken in thinking a second blow would bring my memory, which she would go on calling my mind, back in a rush. I remembered nothing I had forgotten before.
Chapter Eight
I sat in all innocence helping Annie hem up the remains of my green silk to wear as a shawl when Sir Ludwig and Abbie returned from Gillingham. “Well, and did you have a nice trip?” Annie asked.