“But I do!” Annie cried, jumping up. “Rupert was tall, and his killer was very short. If we can prove that—”
“Ah, I see it!” the major said, his face alight with enthusiasm. “The angle… the distance… the relative heights. It can all be calculated!”
“You will need to explain to the less intellectual amongst us,” Benedict said, but his face had lost some of its tension.
“It can be demonstrated,” Annie said. “Major, you are the tallest here, will you play the rôle of my husband? Jerome, you are the shortest, you will have to be the murderer, and stand two feet away. Take the pistols… Now, Captain, how should he hold them?”
“At such close quarters, I should say… thus. About shoulder height. Yes, it would have to be.” He deftly arranged Jerome’s arms. “But I do not see…?”
“It is a triangle,” Jerome said.
“And a simple one to solve,” the major said, reaching for paper and fishing in his pocket for a pencil. He scratched away rapidly, then looked up at them triumphantly.
“Five feet, give or take a couple of inches. The murderess was five feet tall.”
“That must be enough, surely,” Benedict said hopefully.
“It is enough,” Mr Willerton-Forbes said, almost purring with satisfaction. “It does not prove who murdered Rupert Huntly, but it proves beyond all doubt that Mr Adam Huntly did not.”
“Well done, Jerome!” Benedict said. “I shall never make fun of your bizarre questions again.”
“I bet you will. You always do.”
“That is most unfair! I do not.”
Annie laughed and shook her head. “Stop it, both of you. No quarrelling today, I absolutely forbid it. If you have nothing more productive to do, there are still a lot of books to be examined for a missing will.”
“I have an idea about that,” Jerome said. “May I take the plan of the house outside for a while?”
“By all means, since your ideas seem to be working well today.”
“Lucky guess,” muttered Benedict.
“It was not!”
“Enough!” Annie said, laughing. “No wonder Adam says you torment him.”
“Will he be home tomorrow?” Jerome said eagerly.
“I believe he will,” she said.
29: Missing
Adam arrived at Willow Place before noon, for Sir Leonard had heard his case before any others. Annie’s carriage also decanted Mr Willerton-Forbes, Captain Edgerton and Mr Elkington, while Benedict and Major Corbett rode alongside. The entire household gathered in the great hall to welcome the newly-released prisoner. The servants cheered him, Mrs Dresden, Cecilia and Judith twittered around him, the men slapped him on the back, and Judith’s daughters, according the festival atmosphere its proper observance, raced round and round screaming.
Annie stood a little distance away, watching with quiet satisfaction. Adam looked pale and rather rumpled, but otherwise unchanged. Once, as a gap arose in the crowd milling about him, his eyes met hers and she thought she detected an added warmth in them, but then his face disappeared again behind his many well-wishers. Gradually he was led, protesting rather, towards the stairs.
“I need to go home and have a bath,” he said. “I am hardly fit for company.”
“No need,” Edwin said. “There is a room for you here, and Sheffield and I brought your clothes from the Manor. We are all staying here, and Cousin Annie does not mind if we stay longer. ”
They all turned hopeful faces to her, and again Adam’s eyes met hers.
“Please stay,” she said. “Mrs Hewitt is killing the fatted calf for you, so you must not disappoint her.”
“Deer!” Edwin said. “Fatted deer. We know how you love venison, so you see, you must stay here, at least for tonight.”
“Well, that settles it,” he said, with his mischievous grin. “The venison seals the deal, but for one night only, brother. We must not impose on Cousin Annie any longer, not when we have a perfectly good house of our own just a mile away and there are so many of us. But where is my youngest troublemaker?”
Having no trouble interpreting this remark, Edwin said, “Jerome is looking for the will again. I expect he is so engrossed in plans that he has not noticed your arrival.”
“I will look for him later, but first — a bath! Followed by clean clothes, a decent fire and good company. Ah, it is good to be home again!”
No one pointed out that this was Annie’s home, not his, but she noticed his words and they made her glow a little inside. Yet there was pain, too. Was it foolish of her to have hoped for something more from him? Not a kiss, of course, but a touch… he could have taken her hand, or even stood a little closer to her. Only that one brief glance reassured her, somewhat tenuously, that he still felt the same as on that glorious day at the river. Then she felt guilty for needing such reassurance, with her husband so lately in his grave. It was too confusing.
~~~~~
Before Adam had completed his ablutions the visitors began to arrive to offer congratulations and, in Mr Popham’s case, to claim some of the credit for his release.
“I prayed for guidance, Mrs Huntly,” he said proudly, as they waited in the peacock chamber for Adam to reappear, “and the Good Lord popped the relevant texts into my head and inspired me. I held nothing back, I assure you, and I believe Sir Leonard had cause to reconsider his attitude. I do believe he reconsidered.”
“Oh, yes,” Mrs Popham said. “Indeed, he did reconsider, I am sure of it.”
“He was most thoughtful after the sermon,” the vicar said.
“Indeed he was! Most thoughtful,” said his wife.
“I am very sorry to have missed it,” Annie said. “It sounds quite splendid, and we are all grateful for your words.”
“The Lord’s words, Mrs Huntly,” he said, with a satisfied smile. “I am merely the conduit.”
“Exactly what my poor, dear husband used to say,” Mrs Dresden said. “Often and often he said it. ‘I am merely a conduit,’ he said. Or it might have been vehicle, I am not very sure. But one or the other. Alas, my poor Henry! He was a great preacher, too, just like you, Mr Popham, or he would have been if he had lived a little longer. He planned to publish his sermons, you see. Perhaps you could publish yours, Mr Popham.”
“Oh, what a wonderful idea!” Mrs Popham said. “You must ask the bishop when next you are in Salisbury.”
“The bishop… Well now, I am not sure…” he murmured, but his eyes gleamed.
The day passed in a whirl. It was not until they were gathering in the peacock chamber before dinner that Adam said, “Where is Jerome? I have not seen him all day.”
“He is probably still in the hunting room,” Edwin said. “Let me fetch him.” He vanished almost before the words were out of his mouth, but he returned a few minutes later, frowning. “I cannot find him,” he said. “He is not in the hunting room, and he is not in our room upstairs, either.”
“He will turn up in good time for dinner, you may be sure,” Adam said easily.
But he did not, and although they decided not to wait for him, the meal passed uneasily. As soon as the food was served, Annie sent Sheffield and Billy off to search the house. By the time they had finished the meal, the dreadful suspicion was a certainty — Jerome was not anywhere in the house, the stables or the cellars. Even the ice house had been examined, but there was no sign of him.
“Edwin, have you any idea where he might have gone?” Adam said.
He shook his head. “He took the floor plan of the house outside to look at something, but I think it was not helpful, for the plan is back in the hunting room now.”
“We must get up a search party,” Captain Edgerton said at once. “He may have met with some accident.”
“It is already dark, and this is a large estate,” Adam said.
“With torches and calling as we go, we can cover a great deal of ground.”
“If he is lying unconscious somewhere, he will not hear you and you may
miss him in the dark.”
“Surely it is worth a try?” the captain said.
Adam chewed his lip uncertainly. “I do not know… I cannot think… Annie, what is your opinion?”
“There may be a simpler explanation. Perhaps someone should check the Manor, in case he went home for something. Benedict could do that. Captain Edgerton’s idea is a good one, too, because if Jerome has simply fallen somewhere and twisted an ankle, he will be easily found. The captain may take some of the servants to help him.”
As the captain gathered his search party together and the room emptied a little, Adam’s lips lifted into a little smile. “Thank you, Cousin Annie. Your ability to think in a crisis is a great comfort. You have assigned tasks to the others, but what would you have me do?”
“You and Edwin can help me, for I am going to examine the floor plan and Jerome’s notes, and see if I can work out what he was up to. That might help us to guess where he has gone and why he has not returned.”
“You truly think he has met with an accident?” Adam said, fretfully. “He is a great one for exploring, but he is not one to take undue risks.”
“He has a great curiosity and that may lead him into inadvertent danger,” she said. “However, it seems to me most likely that he is still about the house, somewhere. The roof… could he get onto the roof?”
“We checked the roof weeks ago, when we found the stairs in the attics,” Edwin said. “There was nothing of interest there.”
“What about chimneys? Did Jerome ever consider examining the chimneys?”
“We talked about it, but he had a great fear of becoming stuck and someone lighting a fire below him. We did look into the big hearth in the great hall, but we merely held a torch inside to see if any bricks were loose. Or rather, Jerome did. He insisted I stand guard in case any of the servants decided to light the fire.”
“You see?” Adam said eagerly. “He is very sensible.”
“He is,” Annie said, with a smile. “He would not intentionally put himself at risk. Nevertheless, I think it a certainty that a mishap has befallen him, for I have never known him to miss a meal before. Let us go through to the hunting room and look at this plan of the house.”
“What about us?” Judith said, indicating Cecilia as well as herself. “We can help, too.”
Annie looked at them, then at her mother’s anxious face, her handkerchief clutched in her hand. How such upsets distressed her! “I would be glad if you would sit with Mama, since I cannot do so myself,” she said. “Your cheerful company would do much to reassure her.”
“Of course,” Judith said at once. “But if there is anything we may do—”
“I shall be sure to ask, but I do not think there is much to be done beyond searching, as Captain Edgerton is doing, and trying to deduce Jerome’s likely location, as I shall be doing.”
They nodded, Judith relieved, Annie thought, to be given some excuse not to go chasing about in the dark. Cecilia chewed her lip thoughtfully, but said no more as Annie, Adam and Edwin made their way to the hunting room. Adam at once flopped into a chair, head hanging low. After the misery of several days in prison and then his triumphant return, he was now sunk in misery again. Poor Adam! He could not but feel Jerome’s disappearance greatly. She felt it herself, but there was also the same calmness she always felt in a crisis. There were always measures to be tried, no matter how desperate the situation. Jerome had encountered trouble, that much was clear, but there was hope of a safe recovery.
Annie lit all the candles to drive away the gloom. She could not recall being in the hunting room at night before, and everything looked different. The curtains and shutters were still open, the morning’s fire no more than ashes. She bent down at the hearth and stretched her hand out.
“Cold,” she said. “Jerome has not been here for some hours.”
“Would Sheffield not see that the fire was maintained?” Adam said, looking up.
“Not after noon, for I am usually finished in here by then. If Jerome had been here after that hour, he would have put more wood on the fire himself, and he has not. Here is the plan of the house, the ground and upper floors.” She picked it up from where it lay, beside the neatly arranged papers, lists and scribbled notes spread all over the huge desk. Gazing at the plan, she said, “Edwin, do you know what in particular interested your brother?”
“I do not. We have examined the interior rather thoroughly, and on Saturday we walked all round the outside of the house, but he found nothing.”
“Did he spend more time examining one part rather than another? Or one floor more than another?”
“Not that I noticed.”
“Did he seem interested in any room in particular?”
Edwin shook his head, and the anguish in his eyes made him look younger than his sixteen years. He was as tall as a man and he dressed like a gentleman, but tonight fear for his brother brought the boy in him to the surface.
“Do not despair,” Annie said quietly. “We will find him, never fear. Now, show me his most recent notes amongst all these papers. Is there anything that he might have written today, or yesterday, perhaps?”
“What are you doing?” Cecilia’s voice sounded shrill in the quiet atmosphere of the candle-lit room.
Annie looked up with a frown. “We are trying to work out where Jerome may have gone, as I explained.”
“How does this help?” she cried, her words echoing harshly as she gestured towards the papers scattered on the desk. “He would hardly write down where he was going, and I am certain there is nothing on that plan of the house that was not there last week, or last century, come to that. If there is one room in the house where it may be said with absolute surety that he is not hiding, it is this one.”
“We cannot say anything with absolute surety,” Annie said quietly.
“Look about you,” Cecilia said. “Which bookcase is concealing him, do you suppose? Is he under the desk?” She peered beneath it. “No, he is not. Is he under this desk? Again, no. What about this cupboard. No Jerome.” She strode about the room, throwing open drawers and cupboards and peering inside them. “Is he up the chimney? I believe not. He is not here. So why are you looking here?”
“We are not necessarily looking for Jerome in this room,” Annie said patiently. “There may be a clue amongst his papers, however. Edwin, have you found any recent notes?”
“This is new,” he said, pointing to a page with some numbers. “The rest… all these pages are from days ago, but this… I have not seen this before. There is no explanation, just numbers and a few words.”
“His hand is difficult for me to make out. What does it say?”
“Hmm… that word might be ‘small’ but I cannot read the rest.”
“You are right, it is ‘small’, but—”
“How can you do this?” Cecilia said in a small voice, as tears trickled down her face. “How can you be so… so impassive? But I suppose it is not your brother who is missing, so you have not the same feelings on the matter.”
“Annie cares just as much for Jerome as any of us,” Adam said sharply.
“Perhaps she does, but she hides it well behind all this activity.”
“It is true,” Annie said slowly, “that I have not been endowed with so much sensibility as is usual in our sex. It is in my nature to appear composed no matter how great the exigency. When distressed, I turn to rational thought for comfort rather than tears or lamentations. But in this particular case, that may be a benefit to us. Jerome is of a logical, scientific bent. He, too, follows rational thought, and so, if he has left any clues at all as to his deductive reasoning, it may be that I, whose mind is not dissimilar, may be able to follow the same path and arrive at the same conclusion.”
“Deductive reasoning! Rational thought! Such cold words, Annie. Where is your fire, your passion?”
“Neither fire nor passion is of the least use to Jerome!” Annie cried, her temper rising. “Nor are tears and argument. Only
cool heads and calm thought and measured courses of action will bring him home. Cry if you wish, and rail at me as much as you like, but please, give me leave to think.”
Cecilia looked so shocked that Annie guessed she had mortally offended her, but it could not be helped, and at least she was reduced to outraged silence. She turned back to the strange numbers Jerome had written but they meant nothing to her. What did ‘small’ mean? And what on the house plan had drawn his attention?
The others whispered together, but she paid no heed. She thought there was a chink of glass and the sound of liquid being poured — a glass of something to soothe their fears.
She took the paper and the plan to her own desk, moved a candelabrum nearer, then drew out a fresh sheet of paper. Perhaps if she copied whatever she could make out of Jerome’s writing, it would begin to make sense. If only he had taken a little more trouble over his writing, and ensured there was enough ink on his pen! Several of his letters — or perhaps they were numbers, it was hard to tell — were so faint they were practically unreadable. But gradually as she peered at them several more words emerged from the scribble — ‘in’ and ‘out’ and ‘3 ft’.
“Three feet!” she said triumphantly. “Something is three feet. But what?”
“What does that mean?” Edwin said eagerly.
“I wish I knew! And what do these mean, do you suppose? ‘HR’ and ‘Small P’ and ‘Tap Rm’. The tap room? Oh, that must be the tapestry room.”
“And ‘HR’ is the hunting room — this room,” Edwin said excitedly. “But what is ‘Small P’? It is underlined, too.”
“The small pantry? Privy chamber? Parlour?” Cecilia suggested.
“Oh, parlour… the little parlour, yes, but why?” Annie said, frowning in thought. “The tapestry room, the little parlour, the hunting room… the three rooms in this wing of the house.”
“Shall we have a look at it?” Adam said, his face alight with hope. “Since Jerome is not in any of the cupboards in this room, he might be in one in a different room.”
It was the first glimmer of humour from him, and as such Annie cherished it. Adam’s ability to lift everyone’s spirits was such a powerful force that she felt bereft when he was too downhearted to jest and tease.
The Apothecary (Silver Linings Mysteries Book 3) Page 29