High Rhymes and Misdemeanors (17 page)

Grace reached for the lamp, but the unfamiliar draperies and bedclothes got in the way.

Shadows moved past the window: two men struggling.

Grace pawed her way through the bed hangings and found the lamp as another huge crash came from across the room. The harp struck a discordant note.

Peter swore.

At last Grace found the lamp switch.

Gloomy light illuminated the long room. Peter was picking himself up out of a pile of broken Hepple-white. An arras swung gently against the wall.

Otherwise the room was quite empty.

“Like a top.” Peter helped himself to kippers. Grace’s stomach growled hungrily. She couldn’t support the idea of fish for breakfast—nor could she understand the point of putting toast on racks to deliberately make it cold.

“Truly?” Ferdy looked from Peter’s black eye, turning an impressive purple-blue in the dawn’s early light, to Grace. Respect shone in his black button eyes. “I say,” he murmured.

“Do you live here year round?” Grace inquired. “It seems awfully isolated.”

“I live in London.” Ferdy said it as though he were reassuring himself. “I come down to check on the old man now and again. He’s the last of my family, you see, and he’s getting on.” He added gloomily, “Not that he wasn’t always peculiar.”

Grace abandoned hope of finding anything edible on the sideboard. “I guess I’ll just have tea,” she sighed.

“Slimming?” Peter inquired. “Perhaps they can hunt up some biscuits and soda water.”

She gave him a level look. In black jeans and black lambs’ wool pullover, he looked like a cat burglar after a rough night.

“The food’s ghastly,” Ferdy admitted, “but there’s plenty of it.”

As Grace sipped her tea—wondering
how
anyone could possibly spoil tea—Ferdy spoke again.

“Here, let me ask you something. Confidentially, just between us, what’s he up to?”

Peter’s fork paused before his mouth. “You’d have to ask him.”

Ferdy colored angrily. “I like that! You see, I do have a vested interest. It’s entailed. The estate, that is. This house, this land; this will all come to me one day. What’s left of it. He’s in debt, you know. To the hilt. So if he’s off on another of these buying sprees …”

“Is he good for a hundred thousand pounds?” Peter asked bluntly. The crudeness of this took Grace aback.

“Is he—?” Ferdy’s laughter was shrill. “He is not. He’s broke, whether he realizes it or not. What is it this time? Miniatures? Is that it? Or more books? More of these damned first editions?” He turned to Grace. “Tell me this, what’s your involvement?”

“Who, me?” Grace was never brilliant before her morning coffee.

“She’s just a friend,” Peter said.

Ferdy glared at them both for a long moment. “Right.” He checked his watch. “Well, I’ll leave you and your friend to it.”

The dining hall was very empty after he left. Peter finished his kippers and Grace drank more tea.

She was thinking about Peter’s odd behavior the night before. They had discovered a door behind the arras in their bedroom. To Grace’s surprise, Peter had declined to follow their intruders through the dark passage revealed there. This perfectly rational behavior seemed out of character for Peter. If she didn’t know better she’d have suspected Peter was … well, afraid. He had blocked the door with the harp and gone back to bed. But then, since he promptly fell asleep, he couldn’t have been too afraid.

“He could be in on it,” she suggested at last.

Peter shook his head. “The old man doesn’t trust him.”

“That could be an act.”

“That’s quite an act.”

“They do seem to loathe each other,” she admitted. “You know, what doesn’t make sense to me is that they would try to search our luggage after they had already searched while we were at dinner.”

Peter considered this. “What are you thinking? Two searchers?”

“Maybe the second searcher was Ferdy. He’s suspicious of his uncle. Maybe he was trying to find out why we’re here?”

“The bloke I tackled was no amateur,” Peter said.

“Ram Singh then?” Grace asked hopefully.

“Not nearly big enough.”

“Well, who then? Whoever was following us in the Rolls?”

“Maybe. But you do realize that whoever attacked us last night is familiar with this house?”

“With its secret passages, right? Does every house in England have a secret passage?”

“Only the best houses.”

Grace’s brow wrinkled in thought. “Maybe the men in the Rolls are working for Sweet?”

“Possibly, but in that case, why follow us? Besides, didn’t you recognize that Rolls?”

“Well … no.”

Peter’s blue eyes widened. “It’s a fairly unusual vehicle.”

“I don’t notice cars.”

“Think back to the last time you saw a big silver automobile.”

Grace thought back. “Lady Vee’s!”

“Bingo.”

“Mutt and Jeff were following us in the Rolls?”

“Not necessarily. Maybe it was Lady Vee.”

An unexpected laugh gurgled up. She seemed to be doing a lot of that lately: laughing.

Peter’s eyes lit with amusement; however, he said gravely, “If I had to take a guess I’d say it was our pal with the gun.”

“The Que—the muggers!”

“Mm. Something else. I think I know that little runt.”

“From prison?”

Peter choked on his tea.

Grace said doubtfully, “I just thought that perhaps—you had a record.”

“Not in this country!”

“How should I know? The police certainly seem to know you.”

“Nothing was ever proven. In this country.”

“That seems like a—a fine distinction.”

“It’s a crucial distinction.”

“Okay. No need to be so touchy. Where do you think you know him from?”

“That I don’t know.”

“Can’t you ask around? Check with your former … associates?”

At his expression, she said, “Look, I don’t know how this stuff works!”

Sweet had still not made an appearance by the time breakfast was over and an aged pair of servants began clearing away the dishes.

“Probably sleeping it off,” Peter commented.

For lack of anything more productive to do, he and Grace strolled around the grounds. Dank vapor rose from the sea they could hear but not see beyond the red cliffs. Mist cloaked the wilderness that had once been flowerbeds and lawn.

“It must have been impressive in its heyday,” Grace said, staring back at the blind windows of the house. “I can see why Ferdy—I mean, Philip—resents his inheritance being squandered on an obsession.”

“I don’t know,” said Peter. “If it were going to oyster plates …”

Through the sycamore trees they spied a white building looking uncannily like a miniature Greek temple.

“What’s that?” Grace asked.

“The family crypt, I imagine.”

She stopped in her tracks, staring at it uneasily. “Should we—?”

“No.” He sounded so crisp she stared his way. His expression was odd. Possibly those kippers he’d had for breakfast hadn’t agreed with him, she thought.

They trudged on, walking down some stairs into what appeared to be a sunken garden now overgrown with reeds and vines. In the center was a rectangular pool surrounded by battered and broken statuary. The half-shattered head of a helmeted statue lay beside the brackish water.

Peter quoted, “In mossy skulls that nest and lie, ever singing, ‘Die, oh! Die.’ ”

Grace shivered. “It is eerie.”

Leaving the garden, they walked a few yards into the woods, feet crunching the fallen leaves. A squat silver solid form slowly materialized. A riderless Harley motorcycle sat parked in the trees.

Grace caught Peter’s arm. “Look!”

“Shhh. I see.” He freed himself. “Go back to the house.”

“Not without you!”

“I’m coming. I’ll be right behind you.” Hands on her shoulders, he turned her toward the house.

Grace took a couple of steps, then turned.

“But—”

“Go!” He had plastered himself to the nearest tree trunk. From his hiding place he scowled at Grace.

Each footstep sounded as loud as a rifle crack. A few more steps and she glanced around. Peter was gone. Grace stopped. Her eyes scanned the clearing.

“Peter,” she called softly.

There was no reply; the branches swayed where he had stood a moment before.

From the other side of the clearing, a twig snapped.

Grace’s nerve snapped with it.

She bolted, running for the house, feet pounding the uneven ground, heart pumping, arms close to her sides like she was trying out for St. Anne’s track team. The wet grass soaked her suede flats.

The adrenaline surging through her veins sent her leaping over a fallen log like a deer. She hit the ground running, raced up the last leg of the path and reached the back terrace, breathless and spent.

Shaking, clutching the stitch in her side, Grace’s eyes raked the wood line. The silence held an eldritch quality. White billowed throughout the abandoned garden, curling around the moss-stained statues. Far away she could hear the rumble of the sea.

But this is crazy, she thought. I ran from a motorcycle. It could belong to anyone. To a tourist, to a Sunday motorist. True, it didn’t look like the kind of bike tourists would ride. All that bristling, bright metal had a warlike effect, and the sheer size of the thing: like a small silver buffalo …

But still, to run from it?

Why would anyone leave his bike there? The practical side of Grace responded, perhaps he was relieving himself or stretching his legs? But Peter had reacted to the bike, too, she reminded herself. And where was Peter?

“Peter?” she yelled, when she had enough breath to speak.

Nothing.

She opened her mouth to yell again. A window banged open above her head.

“What the devil’s going on down there?” Aeneas Sweet leaned precariously out the window. “Oh, it’s you! Stop that infernal noise!”

“Something’s happened! I need to talk to you!” Grace called up.

“Then come up and talk to me!”

The window slammed shut.

“I have not loved the world, nor the world me,” quoted Sweet. “Do you know the quotation?”

“Isn’t it from ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’?” Grace questioned. She stayed at the window, peering out. The woods stood still and silent.

“Hey? Hmm.” Sweet glowered. “You’re too young to know how true those words are. Truer words were never written.” He seemed to be feeling sorry for himself, for he added, “You see before you a philosopher, an idealist, a man of letters. A man who wished only to devote himself to the pursuit of intellectual studies. But fate was otherwise inclined. I had to bow to duty, to the needs of my family. And what thanks have I received?”

She wondered if Ferdy had tackled him about spending a hundred thousand pounds on first editions.

He sat before his bedroom fire in a sumptuous claret brocade dressing gown. He was drinking something out of a pewter mug. Grace was fairly sure it was not tea. “Sit down, sit down!” he commanded.

She sat down and tried to compose herself.

“Now,” Aeneas Sweet said, “Seeing that this partner of yours is out of the way, suppose you and I try to come to an agreement?”

Her voice shot up despite her effort to stay calm, cool and collected as the commercials advised.

“He’s not out of the way. He’ll be right back! And we told you last night we don’t have it! We don’t even know what it is!”

Sweet said coldly, “Lower your voice. Do you suppose I want that imbecile to know what we’re discussing?”

“That imbecile is the least of your worries. There’s a sinister motorcycle parked in your woods. Not to mention that Mutt and Jeff followed us down here. They’re probably the ones who attacked us last night—unless that was you again. And they may have Peter.”

“Mutt and Jeff?”
The old man gaped at her. “Are you mad?”

“I think I’m the only one of all of you who isn’t.” Even if she was flinging terms like “sinister motorcycle” around. Nervously, she rose again and returned to her vantage point at the window. “I don’t know why I’m wasting time. I should have followed my instinct in the very beginning. I should have gone to the police. Now they have Peter.”

“The police?” gasped Sweet. “The police have Peter Fox?”

“Mutt and Jeff.” Impatiently she clarified, “We call them Mutt and Jeff. We don’t know their real names. Anyway, we’ve wasted enough time sitting around
talking!
” She remembered that in books and movies threatening the police usually ended in the threatener getting knocked off. She sealed her lips on the rest of what she had been about to say.

“Silence! I will not be subjected to the viraginous tantrums of a woman!” Sweet blustered, “Young people have no gratitude. I invite you to my home, share my hospitality with you and that scoundrel, and this is the thanks I get? Fairy tales? Cartoon characters? Well, young woman, I daresay you see now what comes of playing one side against the other. I suggest you reconsider your position before it’s too late.”

He began bellowing for Ram Singh.

Grace left him to it, racing upstairs and then lugging her bags and Peter’s back down to the Land Rover. She knew she should stop and reconnoiter, but she was afraid to spare the time. Every moment might mean life or death to Peter.