Chapter 9 #2
He scowled, sipped, and sighed. “When I walked Atlas over to Lady Clo’s, the footman took me up to the parlor what’s coziest so I could tell Miss West you was at the Keep.
The ladies were talking about skating. Everybody in Hampshire knows how to skate, they says.
The grooms were talking about it last night.
About whizzing along like the London-to-Devon Meteor in full gallop. ”
Perhaps Atticus’s mishap had been an accident, but the potential harm was too serious for me to accept that conclusion without additional investigation.
“You are not to return to the stable just yet,” I said, rising.
“You will bide here at the Keep until tomorrow morning. If you’re coming down with an ague, we should see symptoms by then.
I will leave orders with the kitchen that you are to have all the mulled cider, sliced oranges, and toasted beef sandwiches they can stuff into you. ”
“Oranges?”
“We had them in the nursery when I was a boy—double rations if we were peaked or sniffling. They are in season, and you like them.”
Atticus rearranged his shawl with all the dignity of a dowager queen. “And what if you get an ague? You was in that water too.”
“If I suffer a passing head cold, I will bear up manfully and proceed with my assigned duties.”
Atticus snorted. I retreated into the dressing closet and attired myself in several layers of warm, dry clothing.
I found Bryson Carstairs in his sitting room, pen in hand, cuffs rolled back. His apartment was cozy, the furniture serviceable rather than elegant. He made a handsome picture at his desk, his hair in slight disarray, the winter sunshine beaming through the window over his broad shoulders.
“My lord, you are none the worse for your soaking, I hope?”
He remained seated, and that suited me. I wasn’t making a polite social call.
I surveyed the view from his windows, which included the now-deserted pond. A dark patch showed where the ice had been broken, though it would likely be frozen over by morning.
“I wasn’t in the water for more than a few moments. I’m more concerned about the boy.”
“Your faithful Atticus. I saw the whole business—I was on the point of joining the fun myself—and I don’t know as I would have sorted matters as quickly as you did.”
“The situation merely called for common sense. I’m sure the grooms would have risen to the occasion had I not come along.” I desperately needed to believe that. “I would like to ask you a few questions about that pond, though.”
He wiped the end of his pen on the blotter and laid the quill in a pewter tray.
“It’s a pond. Supposed to be pretty. We all learned to both skate and swim thanks to that pond.
I was quite good at skating, while Algernon was the better swimmer.
I still enjoy a turn on the ice when I have the chance. The water’s not very deep.”
Plenty deep enough to drown a small, panicked boy who could not swim. “How is the pond fed?”
Bryson sat back, eyeing me curiously. “You came here to ask me about the pond?”
“Among other things. That’s an ornamental fixture and filled year-round. Is it fed by pipe or spring?”
“Spring. At least one.”
“Show me where.”
Bryson rose and ambled around to the window.
“The general shape of the pond is like a kidney.” He sketched the contours on the windowpane.
“The typical ornamental pond would be a uniform depth of, say, two or three feet. Enough to keep from freezing solid in the worst weather. A half-dozen barons back, we took an existing pond and refined its shape, and that required making the middle deeper.”
“Is the spring beneath the broken patch of ice?”
He peered down at the body of water halfway across the park.
“No, in fact. The spring comes up nearer the bank in the opposite lobe of the kidney. That’s not the deepest part of the pond, and we did that by design.
Easier to manage a water source if it’s only three feet below ground level rather than eight feet, as I understand it. ”
“That pond is eight feet deep in places?” I had not shouted the question, but the notion that Atticus could have become trapped beneath the ice, lost to all warmth or hope…
“The deepest part,” Bryon said, “is in the middle of the lobe with the broken ice. Right near where your boy went in, which—oddly enough—is about where I myself suffered a boyhood dunking. You’d think that was the best fishing spot, but it seldom is.”
To blazes with the ruddy fishing. That far from the spring, the ice should have been reliably solid. Another spring might have developed after the pond had been enlarged, of course…
“I don’t care for that frown, Caldicott. You are thinking that if the ice was too weak to hold a boy’s weight, it would also have broken under the weight of a man, but the mishap occurred where nobody should have been skating.”
I paced away from the window, fished a pair of blue spectacles from a pocket, and donned them. Sunshine on snow was painfully bright, and I had the throbbing temples to prove it.
“I am thinking,” I said, “that weakening the ice without sweeping it is possible.”
“How? Somebody would have had to walk out onto the unswept portion without leaving tracks and then somehow hammered away without falling in themselves or… I can’t picture a method whereby one person could weaken or break the ice without risking a serious soaking.
Then too, the pond is in plain sight of the Keep.
Your imaginary malefactor would have to have worked by dark of night. ”
I thought back to winters as a boy at Caldicott Hall.
“You haven’t spent enough time around unruly children.
The method is simple. Holding the largest rock you can carry, you skate to the edge of the swept ice.
You then heave your rock up high and wide onto the unswept ice while you skate backward like the demons of hell pursue you. ”
The memories nearly terrified me now. “Eventually,” I went on, “you’ll lob enough heavy, sharp objects hard enough that a lucky shot will crack the ice. Your next makeshift cannonball will break the ice, and the evidence of your perfidy will fall into the water. You’ve left no tracks per se.”
Then too, the previous night had been dark indeed.
“That passed for play in Surrey?”
“You never dropped rocks from bridges as a boy?” I retorted. “The splash alone has a childish appeal.”
“Many times.”
And to underscore the plausibility of my theory, a dusting of snow had come along the previous night, coating the whole pond in a fresh blanket of white. Somebody could have walked partway onto the ice to heave their projectiles toward the deepest water, and we’d see no tracks come morning.
Carstairs resumed his seat behind the desk.
“You would have me believe somebody tampered with the ice. That makes no sense. Nobody is supposed to skate over any part of the pond that hasn’t been swept free of snow.
Michael once got a hell of a bloody nose because he was skating on ice covered by a couple inches of snow.
Caught his skate on a hidden rock and fell hard. ”
“You are correct, accidents happen, but consider this: The ice should have been solid enough in that location to hold the weight of full-grown men. A boy’s weight was all that was needed to break it, and over the deepest portion of the pond.
Last night’s overcast brought both fresh snow and an absence of moonlight. ”
Bryson ran his hands through his hair, further disarranging his locks. “You have a suspicious mind.”
“I have a curious mind and a lively imagination. Had you fallen through that ice, you are unlikely to have perished.”
“Because?”
“You are a competent swimmer, for one thing.” He’d just informed me of that fact. “You have enough body mass to endure cold more effectively than a small boy could, for another. You have gone for a soldier, a sharpshooter, and understand how to keep your head in the midst of pandemonium.”
“Caldicott, it was an accident.”
“Very well. We will label it thus, but consider that this mishap might also have been a warning gone awry. You were about to join the skaters, and you very much enjoy time spent on the ice.”
He stared out the window. “I am already banished. I don’t need reminding of that.”
“But a warning that you can be harmed here at home makes sense from the perspective of whoever wants to keep you exiled.”
“Your overly lively imagination is making leaps and bounds and midair twists, my lord.”
Carstairs would naturally be loath to think himself in danger at his very home. That violated the concept of home altogether.
“My tiger might well develop a roaring lung fever as a result of his mishap,” I said, heading for the door.
“He’s a small boy who did not have a good start in life.
A lung fever could be the end of him, as it might have been the end of your brother Michael.
” I paused before making my exit. “Where will I find Algernon?”
“In his quarters. I’m not sure what he does at this hour of the day, but he’ll be in his apartment. I hope you won’t ply him with endless questions, Caldicott.”
“You sought my assistance in finding answers. Questions yield answers.”
Bryson swiveled his gaze on me, his expression a reminder that I was in the presence of a sharpshooter, a soldier who’d been valued for his ability to exact a lethal toll with each bullet.
“On my previous visits to the Keep,” he said, “nobody fell through the ice. Nobody suffered deadly lung fevers. You have been interrogating friends and family since you set foot in this house, and now you see danger lurking at my elbow. Perhaps there is a connection, Caldicott. If our villain will put a small boy and every groom and stable hand on the property at risk simply to shake a finger in my face, you had best tread carefully on your own behalf too.”
“Sound advice.” I withdrew and closed the door quietly behind me.