Chapter 45
Cecilia did not like the idea of going out into the passageway without some manner of weapon, and so had picked up a sturdy brass candlestick on her way across her bedchamber.
Grasping it tightly, as though it were a hammer – how she wished she had a hammer or a knife or a gun – she stepped out through the door that she had so carefully eased open.
The upper landing was lit by several windows that remained uncurtained – they would have to see to that if they meant to spend the winter here, she thought absently – and so the stark moonlight poured in through the glass and made it easy enough to see.
Last time, it had been much darker and there had been nothing there, apart from Miss Macintyre with a candle. This time…
There was nobody there, but there was no time to collapse in relief either, because Beatrice’s door was ajar, a flickering candle flame showed inside the room, and Cecilia knew, she knew that her sister hadn’t opened the door or lit the candle herself.
This wasn’t mere intuition, but a perfectly sensible and terrifying deduction, because there was an open panel just beside her in the passageway, a dark, gaping hole where no hole had been before.
There was an intruder. She had not been imagining things, not this time and not before.
Someone had entered through the concealed door in the panel, and was now in Bea’s room with her as she slept, doing God knows what.
But while she stood frozen in agonising indecision, wondering if the nocturnal visitor could possibly be Miss Pallant, and be expected and welcome, she heard an urgent whisper.
‘Cecilia… Miss Constantine!’ said an entirely unexpected voice.
This night was taking on the aspect of a nightmare, with a nightmare’s nonsensical logic.
The Major stepped through the open panel and hastened to her side.
Cecilia had not the least idea what he was doing here, but she was excessively pleased to see him.
She gestured wordlessly towards Bea’s open door, and they moved towards it together, and slipped inside in careful silence.
She might be making a hideous and embarrassing mistake, and involving Alistair in it to make matters worse, but…
she had to be sure that her sister was safe.
No other consideration could weigh with her just now.
A tall, cloaked figure stood with its back to them in Bea’s sitting room, lifting something down from the wall. Beatrice, thank God, was nowhere to be seen.
Cecilia would swear she had not made the slightest sound, and nor had Alistair, but as she stood watching, some instinct alerted the intruder – was it a him?
– and he whirled around in a threatening fashion.
It really didn’t seem that this was Vivienne Pallant on a romantic adventure. This was someone far more dangerous.
The mysterious stranger, whose head was muffled up in a scarf, was darting glances from one of them to the other.
Cecilia and the Major blocked his escape by the stairs and by the secret passage – good God, there really was a secret passage!
No doubt she was the less formidable opponent and might easily be pushed over – but whatever he might decide to do in a split second’s panic, he was encumbered by the painting he’d just taken down from the wall.
It wasn’t large, but it looked heavy. She’d never so much as noticed it before, but presumably it was valuable, or he’d not be stealing it.
He was cornered, but would that not make him all the more dangerous?
‘I think between us, we have you pretty well trapped,’ another voice put in drily.
It was Miss Macintyre, wrapped up in her tartan robe, standing in the open door of Bea’s boudoir.
Extraordinarily, she was wielding a small but deadly looking pistol, pointing it at the burglar with what looked to Cecilia like a very steady aim.
‘Set down the Rembrandt, if you please, sir, and step carefully away from it with your hands in the air. To your side, that is, not towards me, or Miss Constantine, or the Major.’
The figure did not move.
‘You will perceive I am holding a weapon, Lord Pallant,’ the old governess said calmly.
If no one else had the faintest idea what was going on tonight, it seemed she did.
‘I have not the least objection in the world to shooting you, though I will not do so unprovoked, and I must warn you that I am a quite excellent shot. I was shooting the pips out of cards before you’d terrified your first housemaid.
I daresay you think I’m an elderly spinster of no account and can’t or won’t hit you even if I do fire.
But you are seriously mistaken. Men of your type so often are, especially where women are concerned.
What I don’t want to do is damage the painting.
But I will risk it, I promise you, if you take so much as a step towards any one of us. ’
The intruder didn’t listen; if it was indeed Lord Pallant, he wasn’t the sort of man who’d ever listened to a woman in all his life.
He strode impetuously towards her, still clutching his prize awkwardly to his chest. Impossible to imagine what he thought he could possibly do, with his arms full of Rembrandt and three people opposing him and blocking his escape.
But still he attempted to menace the old lady with the grey braids and the wicked little pistol.
So she shot him.