The Ladies In Love Series

by M. C. Beaton

  “If I am arrested, my… er… associates will kill Poppy, and since I’ll hang anyway, it doesn’t really matter, you see. You’re trapped, my darling. Marry me, or she’s as dead as mutton.”

  Chapter 14

  Poppy was alive, but far from well. All she could remember of her abduction was peering into the carriage outside her home, expecting to see the duke, and seeing instead a burly-looking individual. And before she could escape, a blow struck her on the head.

  She had recovered consciousness, lying on the floor of the carriage, her wrists and ankles tied and a gag in her mouth.

  After what had seemed like hours of jolting, the carriage had stopped, a bag was put over her head, and she felt herself being carried out into the open air, and then up flights of stairs.

  When her mask had been removed she had found herself in the room where she was to spend her remaining days.

  As far as she could make out it was at the top of some house in the country and had probably been the nursery, for the windows were barred.

  She could only guess she was in the country, because although she was no longer bound, the windows were painted over, but the absence of any noise of traffic outside led her to believe she was far from London.

  A German woman who spoke no English and who looked like a wardress brought her food three times a day. She was flanked on either side by two husky looking men, in case Poppy had any ideas of trying to escape.

  Once her initial, terrible fear had died away, Poppy had then begun to suffer all the pains of solitary confinement. She had begged her uncaring wardress for books, newspapers, sewing, housework, anything to relieve the monotony—but to no avail. The woman did not appear to understand her, and the bodyguards did not seem to wish to.

  Poppy had also begged to be allowed to wash, but this luxury was denied her. A large chamberpot was placed under her bed, but apart from that, she had no other bathroom facilities.

  She looked back on the days when she had never troubled overmuch about bathing and wondered how she could have borne it. Her skin itched, her scalp itched, and she felt dirty all over. She had no change of clothes.

  She worried and worried over Emily and Josie. What could they be thinking? Who had taken her prisoner, and why? What was happening at the theater, and why on earth hadn’t the police done anything? Poppy had a touching faith in the all-powerful arm of the law. And the duke? Oh, how she thought of him and dreamed of him and longed for him. He would surely rescue her.

  But the weary days passed, and he did not come. But the one thought that he would somehow find her was what made her able to bear the monotony of her days.

  She gathered that there was some sort of thoroughfare near the house, and one day she actually heard voices—the soft burr of country voices, a man and a woman. She had flung herself against the windows, beating against the painted glass and shouting “Help!” for all she was worth.

  Trembling with hope, she heard the voices become anxious and questioning, and then a few moments later the front doorbell sounded through the house.

  She listened hard, although it seemed the beating of her heart would drown out every other sound. And then like a knell, a woman’s voice sounded loud and clear from below the window. “Mad, is she? There’s a shame. The poor thing. Sorry to have troubled you, mister,” and then she heard the slow sound of retreating footsteps crunching across gravel.

  “I’m not mad!” she screamed. “Help me!” The footsteps hesitated and then went on. Went away… and took hope with them.

  That was the first day she broke down and cried.

  The second time she cried was for a much worse reason.

  One evening her wardress entered as usual with the meager evening meal and placed it on the table. Poppy noticed with excitement that a newspaper had been folded and placed beside her plate.

  She waited anxiously until the woman and her bodyguards had left, and then seized the paper. She raced over the headlines until she saw her name. It was only a small news item, saying the police had given up hope of finding her. Does no one care? thought Poppy, hurt and bewildered, not knowing she had been front-page headlines for weeks, that His Majesty himself had urged the police force to put out their best efforts. She did not know that her little sisters and her servants now wore black, or that the whole of Cutler’s Fields had gone into mourning.

  Well, she thought grimly, determined to make the best of things, at least I have something to read, and let’s hope it’s got a crossword. So she carefully began to read the newspaper from beginning to end. It was unfortunate that she should have reached the social page before the advertisements, for the advertising page still carried the Duke of Guildham’s offer of reward.

  But the social page carried the announcement of the engagement between Freda von Dierksen and the Duke of Guildham.

  Poppy sat very still, staring at the untasted food on her plate, slowly dropping the newspaper to the floor.

  So he had not meant a word he had said! And following that came the one dreadful thought: Was he responsible for her abduction? And all at once she thought he was. His precious name! She had sullied it or smeared it or whatever it was one did with respectable names, and so he had simply had her removed.

  She threw herself on the bed and cried and cried until she could cry no more—she, who had sworn so bravely, so long ago, that the aristocracy would never make her cry again.

  She lay on the bed, hardly moving, her face turned to the wall, for the next five days. Once she heard one of the bodyguards say crossly, “What if she dies? Mistress won’t like that.” From the depths of her misery, Poppy took the reference to the “mistress” to mean her wardress.

  At the end of her five days of despair the woman brought Poppy’s meals on her own, considering her too far gone to make any effort of escape.

  The white paint across the windows threw up moving shadows of the trees outside, and then on the fifth day, she heard the faint, shrill sounds of children playing, coming from a long distance away.

  Suddenly she sat bolt upright—and then clutched her head, for she was faint from lack of food, having barely touched what they had brought her.

  Emily and Josie! What was happening to them? How could she have given up? Who would care for them now? Almost feverishly she began to pace up and down the room. She must get away! But her legs trembled, and she felt so weak. She tottered back to the bed and lay down.

  The German woman arrived with her lunch, and Poppy noticed for the first time that her jailer was alone.

  They must think I’m past it! she thought with a rush of angry exultation. Well, I’ll show them all. I’ll get back to Emily and Josie if I have to kill the lot of ’em.

  For the next two days she rested and ate carefully, always making sure that she was lying quietly with her face turned to the wall.

  Slowly she began to feel stronger. She put everything out of her mind but the determination to escape. They had left her her reticule, but there was nothing in it she could use as a weapon. They had left her her money, so if—no, when, always when—she escaped, she could pay for some means of transport.

  Then on a hot afternoon, when the sun shining through the white painted windows turned the room into a furnace, she heard the clatter of hooves and the sound of men’s voices.

  It’s no use me shouting, she thought bitterly. They’ll just tell those men I’m mad.

  But it seemed awful just to let them ride by without making some effort.

  All at once Poppy began to sing. She sang one of her most famous songs from The Beggar Princess, her voice cracking at first with disuse, but gradually growing stronger and stronger.

  Boodles Hunter and Sniffy Vere-Smythe reined in their horses and turned to their host, Boofie Posthwaite-Hans-Bellamy. “I say,” said Boodles plaintively. “That sounds just like Poppy Plummett.”

  “Garn!” said Sniffy in his mock cockney. “That ain’t her. She’s dead.”

  “Isn’t that the gel who’s missing
?” asked Boofie. “Lovely voice.”

  “Pity about her, isn’t it?” said Sniffy. All three stopped to listen as the song soared out from the top windows of a rundown country house with a weedy garden, set in the middle of the Essex marshes.

  When the voice had died away Boodles gave a superstitious shudder. “I say, you don’t think it’s her ghost, do you?”

  “Don’t be barmy,” said Boofie cheerfully. “Those phonograph things are absolutely marvelous.”

  “Of course,” said Boodles, his stupid face clearing to its normal expression of complete inanity. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Because you’re an utter ass,” said Sniffy. “I could do with a snifter. Where are we?”

  “Dunno,” said Boofie. “Want to ask at the house?”

  “No,” said Sniffy. “Gives me the creeps. Bound to be chockablock with strange people.”

  “Righty-ho! We’ll just ride along till we meet someone!”

  With that they all broke into a canter and clattered off. No one had heard their conversation, not even Poppy, for although she could hear the sound of voices, they were too far away to make out the words. And so there were no witnesses to their stupidity. No surly Bolshevist or Socialist to sneer and point out again that the upper classes were a useless lot and were inbred to the point of imbecility.

  Some three days later the Duke of Guildham sat in his club in St. James’s Street and stared unseeingly at the newspaper. He could not believe he had allowed himself to be trapped into this marriage. Freda must know how much he now hated and detested her. But while she held Poppy, there was nothing he could do. He had had Freda followed every time she had left her house, but her expeditions had always proved to be innocent.

  He was roused from his worries by the arrival of Mr. MacDonald, who acted as repulsively cheerful as ever.

  “Ah, there you are, Your Grace,” he cried, squeezing his fat form into the armchair opposite.

  “I’ve been trying to track you down. There’s all this expense on secretaries and advertising and private inquiry agents. How long do you wish it to go on?”

  “Until I tell you to stop, and not before,” said the duke coldly. “And now if that is all…”

  “Oh, no. There’s another wee matter,” said the uncrushable MacDonald. “The Plummett girls. Do you mean to keep paying that allowance?”

  “Dammit!” said the duke. “You’ll pay that bloody allowance until the end of time, and don’t dare to say another word about it.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said Macdonald hurriedly. “Just so. I can see Your Grace is not in the mood for a chat. It’s a pity. A pity. There’s a nice bit of property going that I was anxious to discuss, but, ah well, another time, another time.”

  “Yes, another time. Now, go away—wait a bit!” The duke put down his newspaper and looked fully at his man of business for the first time. “Who handles my—Freda von Dierksen’s business?”

  MacDonald looked at his master curiously, and longed to ask him why he simply did not ask his fiancée himself. Nonetheless, he said, “I have reason to believe it’s a Mr. Duggan up in Cheapside.”

  “And he would handle the purchase of any property?”

  “Aye, just so. But he’s a close-mouthed rascal, and he’ll not be giving me any information.”

  “Then get me a burglar,” said the duke impatiently. “The best you can find.”

  “Ah, Your Grace will have his little joke. I call to mind—”

  “Call this to mind,” said the duke, leaning forward and tapping MacDonald on one chubby knee. “When I say I want a burglar, I mean I want a burglar. You’re my man of business, so stop sitting there with your mouth open and start businessing!”

  Poppy’s jailer, for all her grim appearance, was a woman with a bad conscience. Her name was Greta Meyer, and she had been brought over from Freda’s household in Germany, where she acted as housekeeper. She was being paid highly to obey her mistress’s instructions to the letter. Poppy was to be kept dirty and degraded and out of sight.

  But Greta was lonely and worried. The other servants were English, and although Greta only knew a few words of English, she had sufficient intelligence to recognize a very low type of being when she met it.

  She had no fear of the law, for she had come to think of her mistress as above the law. Had not Mr. von Dierksen died after dinner one night, under very suspicious circumstances, and hadn’t they all been sure the mistress had had a hand in it? But the next thing the servants knew, the chief of police had become a regular visitor to the house, and before you knew it, the coroner was passing a verdict of accidental death, and all inquiries had been stopped.

  Greta wished the girl had not sung that day those men were passing. The tune, haunting and pleading and lovely, still rang in her ears. She hated to see the girl, who had been so lovely when she had first arrived, turn white and dirty and gaunt. The men-servants who formed Greta’s bodyguard had conveyed to her, by means of a tattered German-English dictionary, that they were going to travel to the nearest village for a night out, and Greta had been glad to see them go.

  She stood by the kitchen door, staring over the wilderness of the neglected garden. The evening light was mellow and golden, and the air was very sweet. She thought of the rank, foul-smelling air in her prisoner’s room and shuddered.

  She walked slowly back to the kitchen and picked up the dictionary. Perhaps if she bound her prisoner with a strong rope, she could lead her out into the garden while the men were away, and perhaps the girl might sing again.

  Greta searched through drawers and cupboards until she came across a stout length of clothesline. Feeling easier in her conscience, she mounted the stairs to tell her prisoner the good news.

  Poppy was lying, as usual, with her face to the wall. Greta approached the bed. “Frau Plummett,” she said, and Poppy twisted around, amazed to hear her jailer actually speak. “Frau Plummett,” said Greta, holding out the rope. “Herren—men—gone out. You… me in garden go. Yes? I tie.”

  Poppy stared at her, feeling her own muscles tense. She nodded, and Greta bent over her with the rope.

  With the strength of a madwoman, Poppy fell upon her. Greta was completely taken by surprise, and although she was much stronger than Poppy, Poppy was fighting for her life. At one point however, Poppy felt her strength begin to ebb. The prison walls were closing about her again, and as she struggled and punched and bit and scratched, she saw the heavy water jug standing on the table, and freeing one arm, she picked it up and brought it down as hard as she could on Greta’s head.

  Greta subsided with a moan, and with trembling, shaking hands Poppy trussed her up. She made a rush for the door, and then hesitated. Greta had tried to be kind. She turned back and, stooping over the other woman, felt her pulse. To her immeasurable relief, it was beating steadily.

  Than Poppy ran headlong down the stairs and out into the cool evening air. There was nobody about. The fields and marshes stretched out before the end of the weedy garden on the other side of a small country road. Picking up her skirts, and dimly registering with surprise that she had had the sense to seize her reticule, Poppy took to the fields, running and running, feeling the light evening air rushing past her face, dreading every moment to hear the shouts of pursuit.

  After what seemed a very long time she came to a clear, still pool surrounded with stunted willows.

  She looked slowly around. There was not a living soul in sight, except a sparrow hawk hovering motionless in the air.

  Slowly she took off every stitch of clothing and plunged into the pool, ducking her head under the water, running her fingers through her hair and wishing she had a bar of soap. Then she washed out all her clothes and spread them out on the willows to dry. The air was very tranquil and warm. She sat naked and uncaring beside the pool, keeping her mind a careful blank.

  At last when her clothes were almost dry Poppy put them on and began to stride across the marshes, which had been burned dry and brown
by the heat of the early summer.

  Soon her hair dried, and she took out a comb and tidied it carefully, twisting it up in a knot on the top of her head.

  As darkness fell she saw the twinkling lights of a town in the distance and headed straight toward it.

  Poppy strode through the evening streets of the town at a steady pace. She walked under the blue lamp of the police station, never once thinking to go in and ask for help. All Poppy wanted was to get home to Emily and Josie.

  Revenge and reports to the police and all the slow wheels of justice could be set in motion. But not tonight.

  The wooden, chaletlike structure of a small railway station loomed up. She was in luck. There was a slow train to London, due in a few minutes. Calmly she paid for a first-class ticket to Victoria Station, and sat on the platform, waiting for the arrival of the London train.

  Poppy was going home. She was alive… she was free. And nothing else mattered.

  The Duke of Guildham sat in his club, feeling more desolate than he had ever before felt in his life. He had had such hopes of MacDonald’s cat burglar. But although the man had successfully broken into the offices of Mr. Duggan, and had removed all papers pertaining to Mrs. von Dierksen’s business, there was nothing to give a clue to Poppy’s whereabouts—no mysterious purchase of property in a secluded part of the country. The duke had wearily decided that Freda had either spirited Poppy out of England, or had had a house bought for her by someone else.

  The wedding was set for a month’s time. However, he realized that Freda had been extremely stupid. If he found Poppy alive and well, or dead, or whatever she was, so long as she was out of Freda’s clutches, then he would first file for divorce and then make sure Freda appeared at the Old Bailey to answer for her crimes. He knew Freda thought he would wish to hush up any scandal and that that would keep her safe from justice, and he had let her go on believing it.

  “Hullo, Guildham!” The duke looked up impatiently into the unlovely features of Sniffy Vere-Smythe. “Mind if I join you?” said Sniffy, sitting down opposite.