Chapter Three #2
It was a relief when Dotty finally declared herself sated after her third plateful of breakfast and suggested to Lady Hardcastle and me that we might set off to hunt for her missing rubies.
‘And what about my diamonds?’ asked Patience.
‘We shall look for them all,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Come with us. We’ll make an adventure of it.’
Patience harrumphed, but appeared to acquiesce.
Lady Hardcastle looked to JB. ‘You don’t mind us poking about the fort, do you, JB?’
‘Not at all. I want these things found as much as anyone.’
‘Does anyone else have any objections to our entering your rooms?’
There were none.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ said Everett. ‘It’ll be the servants. Those two are definitely up to something.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Lady Hardcastle.
Everett simply shrugged and returned to his food.
Lady Hardcastle turned once more to JB. ‘Is anywhere out of bounds?’
‘Nowhere. Go as you please. If a door’s unlocked, you can go in. If it’s locked, just ask Crawford for the key.’
‘Thank you. Come on then, ladies. Let’s retrieve your gems.’
We trooped out into the passageway, and I had to reorientate myself. I wanted to head for the stairs, but I’d forgotten that the dining room was on the first floor. Most of the bedrooms were on this floor, too, beginning with the Everetts’, which was right next door.
‘I’m not at all sure I’m comfortable poking about in other people’s bedrooms,’ said Dotty as Lady Hardcastle put her hand on the iron door handle.
‘I’m perfectly happy,’ said Patience. ‘That brooch cost a small fortune. Actually, quite a large one – I could probably buy my own place in the country for what that pretty little trinket cost. And I’m getting it back no matter who I have to upset.’
Lady Hardcastle turned away from the door. ‘Well, that puts a different complexion on things,’ she said. ‘I’d assumed the pieces were expensive, but not house-in-the-country expensive.’
‘The rubies would probably buy two houses in the country,’ said Dotty, the competition still inexplicably on her mind.
‘Why on earth didn’t you say?’ asked Lady Hardcastle.
Dotty shrugged. ‘It seemed a little vulgar to talk about money like that.’
‘Well, I’m not above talking about money,’ said Patience. ‘So let’s get this door open and get on with it. I’ve never been sure about Edgar. Nasty chap. I wouldn’t put it past him to steal our jewellery out of spite.’
‘Spite?’ I said.
‘Dotty and I play our little game of trying to trump each other’s jewels, and he seems to think it diverts attention from his wife’s music.
Or, more likely, it’s that it diverts attention from him.
He never seems especially happy that she’s the star of the show.
But I can imagine him pinching the bijouterie just to teach us a lesson. ’
‘The money would come in handy, too,’ I said.
‘Well, quite.’
Lady Hardcastle gave a nod. ‘The other possibility is that it’s all some sort of practical joke.
I’m temporarily at a loss to fathom what the payoff might be, but rather an unfunny joke than an actual tealeaf in our midst. Admittedly, Everett doesn’t seem like a man given to making practical jokes – or jokes of any kind for the matter of that – but if you think him capable of acting out of genuine malice, then it still fits. ’
‘As long as we’re not actually accusing anyone of theft, then I suppose it’s all right,’ said Dotty.
Lady Hardcastle smiled and opened the door. ‘At this point, we’re accusing no one of anything, dear, but we can’t find these valuable pieces without looking. And we can’t claim to have looked unless we look everywhere.’
We followed her in.
The room was almost unnaturally tidy. I imagined Lady Hardcastle’s brain whirring, trying to fathom how anyone could possibly live in such a neat room, but it made perfect sense to me.
The floor was clear, with all the furniture pushed back against the walls, so that it was possible to walk from the door to the bed, and from there to the washbasin without any obstructions.
There was nothing to trip over, and that’s the way Clarice would need an unfamiliar room to be.
‘It shouldn’t take us long if we work together,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Check drawers, suitcases, trunks and bags. Under the bed, too. Look in shoes in the wardrobe. Anywhere that could hold a ruby necklace and a diamond brooch.’
We did as we were asked but found nothing. Lady Hardcastle briefly had to take over when Dotty refused to rootle through Edgar Everett’s sock drawer, but the search was otherwise incident-free.
We moved on.
‘Oh, but this is our room,’ said Dotty. ‘I’ve already looked here.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Lady Hardcastle, ‘we should check it just as we will all the others. We can’t claim to have conducted a thorough search if we leave rooms out.’
‘Then would you mind if I didn’t accompany you? It would be altogether too mortifying to have to be there while you rummage through my unmentionables.’
I tried not to chuckle.
Patience made no such attempt. ‘I, for one, am intrigued to see the marvels of twentieth-century engineering that serve as your foundation garments, Dotty dear.’
‘You see?’ said Dotty. ‘Mortifying. We’re not all blessed with your willowy figure, Speedy darling. Some of us need a little help, and I’d rather not be there when you find out quite how much.’
‘Speedy?’ asked Lady Hardcastle as we began our search.
Patience sighed. ‘My little sister was unable to say Patience and called me Pacy. The name stuck and family and friends called me Pace or Pacy from then on. Gran Bridgewater, as you might have discerned, fancies himself as something of a wit and he changed Pacy to Speedy one evening as a reaction to my impatience at the bridge table.’
‘Do you mind?’
‘Would there be any point? It’s affectionate at least. Had he a better vocabulary he might have settled on “restless” or “fretful” or some other word for impatient, so it could have been worse. At least Speedy makes me sound like a woman of action and accomplishment.’
A thorough search of the Bridgewaters’ room revealed no missing jewellery but did, as promised, provide an insight into the architectural scaffolding techniques of haute couture.
George Wilson’s room was gem-free, as were both mine and Lady Hardcastle’s.
We moved to the empty room reserved for today’s late arrival but there was nothing there save for clean towels.
The cupboards were searched, as was every nook and cranny in every bathroom.
We were careful in the long gallery not to damage any of JB’s exhibits but we still didn’t find what we were looking for.
‘Upstairs?’ said Lady Hardcastle when we had completed our search of the first floor.
‘There are a few rooms up there,’ said Patience. ‘Though I think JB’s suite is the only one that’s occupied. There’s nothing but an empty corridor on the dining room side of the fort.’
We searched the bedrooms and the various storerooms on the second floor. Still nothing.
By this point, Patience was clearly bored, and we left her in her room.
We started to make our way downstairs but Lady Hardcastle paused and pointed. ‘What about those doors. Do they lead outside?’
‘Yes,’ said Dotty. ‘Out on to the terrace. It was the main gun platform when this was a fort, but JB has it decked out as a sun terrace now.’
‘Is there anything out there?’
‘A shed for the furniture, that’s all.’
‘We’d better have a look.’
And so we dutifully trooped out into the rising wind, checked the shed and trooped back. We found spiders – what were they doing out there? How did they get here from the mainland? What did they find to eat? – and some rather nice outdoor furniture, but nothing else of note.
We returned indoors and made our way down to the ground floor.
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Dotty, ‘is who had the time to take my necklace. It was with me in our bedroom. Then everyone was down in the library for drinks. Then we had dinner. Then we all went to the drawing room to hear Clarice. No one had a chance to ransack both our room and Patience’s.’
I shook my head. ‘That’s not entirely true.
There was about half an hour between the end of dinner and the start of Clarice’s performance when everyone was coming and going.
No one was in sight for the whole time. And if the thief had planned everything properly, it would be easy for them to do the deed and sneak back unnoticed. ’
She sighed. ‘So it could be anyone.’
Lady Hardcastle patted her arm. ‘We’ll find it. Them. You know, it really could all just be a practical joke.’
‘I’ve never been fond of practical jokes, you know. They always rely on making the victim look foolish. And I feel quite foolish enough most of the time without someone deliberately making fun of me.’
‘We just have to take it with good grace. They’re probably waiting for us to exhaust ourselves with this fruitless search before plucking them from a coat pocket with a flourish and then laughing themselves hoarse at how silly we’ve all been. We’ll smile ruefully and pretend we don’t mind.’
‘Hmm. I certainly wouldn’t put it past Gran to do something like that. Sometimes I wish I didn’t love him quite so much – he can be so exhausting.’
I laughed. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any malice in him.’
‘None whatsoever, dear, but sometimes one feels that life would be a good deal less hard work if every interaction didn’t have to begin or end with a joke.’
‘Is he that good an actor?’ asked Lady Hardcastle. ‘He certainly seemed most perturbed by the disappearance of your rubies.’
‘Oh, he could have been on the stage, dear. Honestly, sometimes I think he’d rather have done that than be a boring old solicitor.’
We made our way to the library to begin our search of the ground floor.
‘Do you know the Crawfords?’ asked Lady Hardcastle.