High Rhymes and Misdemeanors (21 page)

Grace was just finishing up her deviled kidney and eggs when Allegra strolled in.

“No wire hangers, no starch,” she said cheerfully, draping Grace’s things over the rocker. “Feeling better?”

“Loads,” said Grace. “Thanks for … everything. I must have passed out.”

“Rather.”

“You didn’t …” it was all a little awkward in the face of Allegra’s blank courtesy, “think we should call the police?”

“The police?” Allegra’s delicate brows arched. “Maybe you’d better speak to Auntie Vee first.” She glanced at the ormolu clock on the fireplace mantel. “Say in about an hour? I know you must be longing for a nice hot bath.”

Grace had her nice hot bath, dressed and made her way downstairs. As she reached the front hall she made a detour toward the door, but a small gnomish man seemed to pop out of the wallpaper. He moved to intercept her, although his face remained impassively courteous.

“This way, miss.” He beckoned toward the drawing room.

“Oh, sure!” Grace offered a feeble smile. “It’s such a big house, isn’t it?”

Jeff’s smile was equally meaningless. He ushered her toward the drawing room where Lady Venetia and Allegra waited.

“Oh there you are, my
deah,
“ Lady Vee greeted her, speaking around the ivory cigarette holder. “What a relief to see you looking so well after your misadventures.”

Lady Vee looked well, too. Today’s ensemble was a white tea-length frock and three ropes of pearls down to her navel. Her blue-black hair shone glossily in the light streaming through the tall windows. Hair that shiny had to be a wig, Grace decided.

“Thank you,” Grace said. “And thank you for your kindness last night. I can’t help feeling that we should have called the police though.”

“My
deah,
it is our pleasure to help Petah’s little friend.” Lady Vee’s purple shadowed eyelids dropped briefly like a sleepy snake’s.

Allegra stared out the window, her arms folded. Wearing riding breeches and a hacking jacket she could have stepped from an old episode of
The Avengers
.

Lady Vee glanced at her niece and then returned her attention to Grace. She smiled still more widely. Between the parchment skin and that glossy black bob, she reminded Grace of an Egyptian mummy. Grace smiled back.

“May I use the phone?”

“Of all the exasperating things, my deah! It’s out of order.”

“You’re joking,” Grace said.

“No, my dear. Allegra, what is the news about the phone?”

“I have no idea.”

“Is there a phone in the stables or the garage?” Grace tried again.

“Why, my dear?”

It was like trying to converse in a foreign language. “To begin with, to call the police.”

“The police!” Lady Venetia tittered as though someone had made a rude joke. “Well of course you
may,
but perhaps you had better hear my little proposition first.”

“Peter won’t appreciate the police being called in,” Al put in suddenly. “The entire county is gossiping about him now. Gossiping about the body in his garden.”

“Where is Peter?” Grace questioned, looking from one to the other of them.

Lady Vee wafted the cigarette holder. “My deah, how should we know? You must have some arrangement for getting in touch with him.”

“Has something happened to him?”

Allegra laughed bitterly. She kept her gaze fastened out the window as though the answer to all her problems were on the horizon.

Lady Vee soothed, “Don’t be ridiculous, child. Peter Fox is more than capable of taking care of himself.”

Grace was silent. It began to seem like a good idea to hear what her hostess had to say.

“Now, I am still prepared to be quite generous, although I must say I am monstrously disappointed in Peter—”

“We don’t have it,” Grace interrupted, forgetting all about being quiet and listening to what Venetia had to say.

Lady Vee shook her head. Her raven hair swung against her wrinkled cheeks. “My
deah
…” she protested.

“It’s true. We’ve never had it. Danny Delon was murdered before he could tell Peter where he hid the cameos.”

“Murdered!”

“You must think we’re pretty stupid,” Allegra sneered, at last turning to face the room.

Grace avoided the obvious answer. “It’s the truth,” she repeated. “We didn’t even know what we were looking for until a couple of days ago. Delon’s is the body the police found in the lake. Someone murdered him and tried to kill Peter when he was in Kentmere. He was on a buying trip.”

Allegra and her aunt exchanged a certain look.

“That maniac!” exclaimed Lady Venetia.

“Peter?” Grace inquired.

“Ram Dam or whatever his name is. Sweet’s serving man.”

Grace put the pieces together fast. “Ram Singh murdered Danny Delon?”

“But of course. Ram Singh attacked Peter. Bartleby saw him do it.”

“B-Bartleby?” Grace faltered.

Lady Vee tapped cigarette ashes into a brass ashtray and shook her head regretfully. “My deah, you would be so much safer dealing with me than those dreadful people Aeneas Sweet employs. Sweet cannot be trusted. He is
unbalanced
.”

“Fine,” Grace said. “We’ll deal with you. It doesn’t matter to me who—just let me talk to Peter. Let me call him.”

“She’s lying,” Allegra said.

“Of course she is,” Lady Vee agreed.

“She’s going to try and pull something.”

“Naturally.”

No empty seats at the Mad Hatter’s table.

“Now,” Lady Venetia said briskly, “As I said, I’m quite prepared to be generous, but we must come to some agreement. I’m afraid that you, my dear, are our bargaining chip.”

Grace stared. “Let me get this straight: you’re planning to hold me hostage?”

Lady Venetia looked pained. “What a thing to suggest. We simply wish to ensure Peter’s attention.”

“But you don’t know where he is.”

“He’s looking for you, my dear. Where else would he be? We’ll let him look for a while and then he’ll be very glad to make a deal.”

“Maybe he’ll make another deal in the meantime.”

“Then he would have to unmake it.” Lady Vee shrugged her skeletal shoulders. “Anyway, you underestimate yourself.”

“Not really,” Grace sighed.

Détente ended there. Grace was marched back upstairs and locked in the bedroom with its gilt fixtures and blue brocade wallpaper.

For a few minutes she sat there considering her options. Then she checked out the windows. She had had great luck with windows lately, but not today. The guest room was three stories off the ground and there wasn’t a tree branch in sight.

She paced up and down the black Oriental carpet and then wandered over to the dressing table. Like any well-equipped dressing table it had various items including hairpins, hair comb and a nail file. She tested the point of the nail file against her fingertip and went to examine the door.

Of course picking locks looked so easy on TV. Grace stared at the knob and suddenly an idea occurred, almost startling in its simplicity. Using the nail file, she unscrewed the doorknob, removed it and opened the door. A quick glance up and down the hall assured her the coast was clear. Sneaking into the room next door, she spotted a phone. A dial tone greeted her ears. Grace dialed Peter’s number.

The phone rang and rang and then …

Peter’s answering machine came on.

“It’s me,” she said, keeping her voice down. “Pick up. If you’re there, pick up.”

Nothing.

Please, please, she prayed.

Nothing.

Grace spoke hurriedly into the mouthpiece. “I’m at Lady Venetia’s. They’re holding me here to try and force you to bargain with them.”

From down the hall she could hear a vacuum. Replacing the phone, she poked her head out the door. In the hall she spied a vacuum cleaner and a hose leading into a bedroom. Presumably the maid was at the other end of the hose. Grace ducked into the hall, tiptoeing along to her room and letting herself back inside. She replaced the knob, which hung lopsidedly if anyone was noticing. She hoped no one would. If Lady Vee suspected Grace had contacted Peter who knew what she might do—have Grace moved to another “safe house?”

Luncheon consisted of orange-rosemary chicken, chilled vegetables and summer pudding. Grace succumbed to her tendency to eat when she was nervous, and had two helpings of pudding, which consisted of bread and fruit and clotted cream. In short, a calorie fest.

In between bites, Grace asked Lady Vee about the history of the cameos. She was treated to the tale of Byron’s last days.

“Of course he was the only one with the least idea of organization. The Greek Army was a joke! B. spent nearly all his own fortune as well as all the money collected by the English supporters of the Greek Revolution, trying to make soldiers out of peasants. But it was a noble cause and one dear to his heart.”

Grace made some polite acknowledgment. It seemed to her that Byron would have done better to stay home and keep writing.

“And the darling boy’s health was never good.
How
he suffered, if we are to believe Trelawny’s report of his examination of Byron’s embalmed body!”

Not exactly mealtime conversation, but Grace couldn’t refrain from arguing, “But didn’t Trelawny later recant his story that both Byron’s feet were clubbed? From what I’ve read it seems that most historians believe Trelawny took all kinds of liberties with the facts.”

Lady Vee waved this off as of no importance. “And then of course there was the epileptic seizure Byron suffered in February. So difficult to know what may have triggered it, and while it was not the cause of his death, it certainly must have contributed. How ironic that one so gallant, so vital should in the end die as a result of catching a chill.”

“But didn’t Byron actually die of the treatment he received?”

Lady Vee’s face suffused with color. “Yes! I see that you do know your Byron. The poor darling suffered a relapse of the malaria he had contracted in 1811. Those so-called doctors and that
fool
valet killed him with their purges and their leeches! B. actually said they were assassinating him …”

Lady Vee fell silent. Following her gaze, both Grace and Al glanced around. Through the French doors they watched a white Land Rover enter the stately gates and drive slowly along the circular drive before vanishing out of their sight.

“He’s here,” Allegra said unnecessarily.

Lady Venetia allowed herself a tiny smile, and took a bite of summer pudding. “Naturally.” She beckoned to one of the servants to lay another place setting.

Thirty seconds later a bell chimed musically throughout the house.

Lady Venetia met Grace’s doubtful gaze. “Have another pudding, child,” she invited, with the cool confidence of a woman holding all the cards.

Thirty seconds after
that
there came a sound like someone throwing someone else into a table.

And then a sound like someone threw someone into a wall.

The pictures on the dining room wall slid back and forth like pendulums. The double doors to the dining room banged open.

To borrow the vernacular of Grace’s students, Peter looked … awesome. Cuban boots, slim-fitting Levis, a vest of crushed teal velvet and a white poet’s shirt. In fact, he looked like a very hip poet. What he said was prosaic enough. “I really don’t have time for this.” He glanced Grace’s way. “Grace—”

Grace was already on her feet.

“So nice to see you again,” she couldn’t resist saying in passing.

Allegra sat like a stone. Lady Venetia was on her feet, hands braced on the table. “What do you think you’re doing?” she shrieked. “You can’t just walk in here and—and
take
her.”

A little nastily Peter said, “Really? Why’s that?”

“We have to—to talk. We have to decide—”

Grace heard Peter say, “Actually we don’t.”

“But-but—” The old woman looked about for her conspicuously absent minions.

They went out through the main hall, and Bartleby and Jeff—or perhaps it was Mutt and Bartleby—were lying on the floor. They did not actually have stars or songbirds orbiting their heads but they gave the general impression that they were through for the day.

“My hero,” Grace said.

“I bet you say that to all the boys.” On the porch Peter kissed Grace once, hard. Then grinned. “Hello again.”

“Miss me?” Grace inquired.

“A little.”

They got into the Land Rover and Grace watched the white house in the side mirror grow smaller and smaller in the distance till it was the size of a dollhouse.

“If they had brains,” Peter remarked, “they’d be dangerous.”

As the Land Rover zipped along the hilly road, Grace related her adventures.