The Tale of Castle Cottage (24 page)

“Uh-oh,”
said Jumpin’ Jemmy.

“Them Jack Russells is allus trouble,”
Firehouse Frank agreed very seriously. He took out a packet of tobacco and a packet of papers and began to roll a cigarette.
“They never know when to quit. Stubborn as the devil hisself.”
He had tangled with one once, and the encounter had seared itself into his memory.
“Any more terriers in town, Bob?”

“Not that we’ve heard.”
Bludger Bob handed Firehouse a match.
“Mostly, just old slow dogs, tho’ there’s a few young sheepdogs, without any trainin’ or interest in rat-catchin’.”
He shook his head.
“Don’t seem like we’ll run up against any we can’t handle. But pass the word to keep a close eye peeled for that Rascal. Nick the Knife says ’ee’s trouble with a big
T
.”

“Well warned, then.”
Rooker straightened up and glanced from one to the other of the rats around the table.
“Yer all set to go out agin tonight and clean up, boys?”

“Yessir,”
the rats answered in an eager chorus.
“All set, sir.”

“I got my eye on that bak’ry,”
Jumpin’ Jemmy asserted.
“The lady wot runs it never locks her cash box. And ’er sticky buns ain’t half-bad, neither.”
He elbowed Frank with a playful grin.
“Ye can go with me if ye want, Firehouse. Wouldn’t mind somebody watchin’ the door for me, now, would I?”

“Not me,”
Frank replied warmly, pulling on his cigarette.
“I’m headed for the pub. I’ll be glad if ye can go along wi’ me, Bludger Bob. Between the kitchen and the bar, there’s work for two an’ then some.”

“I’m yer man, Firehouse,”
said Bludger, with a conscious irony. He yanked his bowler hat down over his eye, rubbed his paws together, and grinned evilly.
“We’ll clean ’em out, we will. Won’t be nuffin left fer breakfast when we gets finished with ’em.”

“Looks like rain out there t’night,”
Jumpin’ Jemmy added, grinning.
“It’ll keep the folks in by their fires. ’Speshly the cats an’ dogs,”
he added.

“Aye,”
Rooker agreed.
“Rain is right for the likes o’ we.”
He knocked the bowl of his pipe onto the floor.
“One more thing. If ye see somethin’ ye fancy—plate or a picture or fine tool—and it’s too big to be dragged through the trapdoor, don’t let that stop ye. Ye can stash yer swag under that pile of hay on the floor up there.”
He nodded in the direction of the ceiling of their hideout.
“The barn ain’t in use right now, so nobody’s goin’ to find it.”

Rooker was led to say this because his rats were in the habit of dragging in swag of various sizes. Some of the booty—rings and studs, for instance—was quite small, whilst some of it was larger, such as the cream jug that Firehouse Frank had lifted from Mrs. Braithwaite’s sideboard and the miniature silver frame containing the wedding photograph of Captain and Mrs. Miles Woodcock that Bludger Bob copped from the Tower Bank library. The photograph was obviously of little value, Bob thought, but the silver frame might be worth as much as a crown. (Actually, Dimity Kittredge had paid double that at the expensive shop in London where she’d bought it. There are all kinds of thievery.)

Or the very curious book that Rooker himself had stolen.

Now, it must be said that our larcenous friend is not much of a book reader (his taste runs to racing forms, theater playbills, and sensational penny-sheets). But even if he were a reader, he could not have read this unusual book. It wasn’t written in English, and even though the letters looked tantalizingly familiar, he couldn’t make heads nor tails (so to speak) of the words. It wasn’t printed on paper, either, as most books of his acquaintance were. The letters appeared to be written in ink (some of it slightly smudged) on soft, supple pages that felt very much like (Rooker shuddered) animal skin. One or two of the pages contained no writing at all, but only a brightly colored design that looked something like a Turkish carpet.

It was not the pages of this book that caught Rooker’s attention, however, nor was he particularly interested in what was written on them, or who wrote it, or when. What had attracted him (and the reason he had nicked the thing in the first place) was its remarkable cover, which was devised of leather and hammered gold and studded with what looked to Rooker like rubies and emeralds and sapphires. Of course, they might be just bits of polished glass, but Rooker didn’t think so.

Rubies and emeralds and sapphires, indeed! And unless the old rat missed his guess (which he almost never did, for he had the eye of an accomplished thief), this curious book would be worth quite a bit in the underworld art market.

Which was why he had hidden it under the pile of hay on the floor of the Castle Farm barn.

16

Speaking of Books . . .

When we took leave of Lady Longford at the end of Chapter Six, she had been nearly bowled over by the news that her husband’s collection of moldy old books was worth the tidy sum of ten thousand pounds sterling. But as you will recall, Mr. Depford Darnwell, who appraised the collection, made it clear that this amount did not include the
Revelation of John
, which was listed in Lord Longford’s book catalog but was not on the shelves with the rest of the collection. Mr. Darnwell had informed her ladyship that even though the book was unfinished and consisted of only eight pages, it might be ten times more valuable than the collection as a whole. Where was it? Might he see it? Her ladyship, chagrined, had to confess that she had never seen the book and knew nothing about it. It had apparently gone missing.

Remembering this (and putting two and two together), perhaps you have concluded that Rooker Rat has broken into Tidmarsh Manor and stolen this valuable book. But I must tell you, straight off, that this is not what happened, so that you will not waste your valuable time attempting to follow this particular red herring.

But is it not true, you quite reasonably ask, that the book hidden under the pile of hay in the barn at Castle Farm is the very same book that Lady Longford is searching for?

Yes, indeed. It is the same book—or at least I feel that it must be, for Mr. Darnwell has said that there is not another such book in the world, except for the Lindisfarne Gospels, which the British Museum holds firmly in its proprietary grip and which you can see if you visit the museum. And which Beatrix herself had seen on numerous occasions when she visited the museum with her father and Bertram—had seen and admired and no doubt remembered.

Well, then, I hear you asking, if Rooker did not steal the book from Tidmarsh Manor, where did he get it? You will learn the answer to that question in good time, if you will contain your soul in patience for a little longer. Or at least I think you will, for stories generally provide the answers to important plot puzzles, of which this is certainly one.

Therefore, we shall return to Lady Longford and the missing book.

Her ladyship is particularly anxious to find it, I am sorry to say, not because she values the
Revelation
as an object of art and rare antiquity but because of what Mr. Darnwell has said it will fetch when it is sold. And she has another reason, too, even less laudable than this. She is deeply and painfully mortified by the idea that something that belongs to her has disappeared and cannot be accounted for. You may be acquainted with people like this, who have an exceedingly strong proprietary sense and value a thing not because it is fine or beautiful or ancient or otherwise desirable, but chiefly because it is
theirs
.

This is the case, I am sorry to say, with Lady Longford, who is not only chagrined that the book has gone missing but is deeply annoyed at poor Lord Longford, whom she suspects of having carelessly mislaid it.

Now, when Lady Longford began her search, she had the idea that the book would be found quickly and without a lot of trouble. She began by searching the rooms adjacent to the third-floor box room where the books were kept, then extended the search to the servants’ sleeping quarters and the old nursery and schoolroom, unused for many years, all on that same floor. Did she search the servants’ bureau drawers? Yes, quite naturally she did, for didn’t the rooms belong to her, and the drawers, and the servants, as well? And after that, she moved up yet another flight of stairs, to the dark and dusty attics.

I daresay you are laughing up your sleeve at the futility of all this rummaging around, for you know where the book is—and that it is not at Tidmarsh Manor. But Lady Longford does not know this and is driven by an extraordinarily intense and greedy desire to find it. She is not doing any of the searching herself, of course. She is merely supervising the work that is carried out by Maud Bloomsdale, the upstairs maid. But she is supervising very carefully, making sure that Maud does not “accidentally” slip the book or anything else (a cuff link, say, or a silk handkerchief or a tortoiseshell comb) into a pocket of her frilly white apron.

However, whilst this search was conducted both expeditiously and intensively, it was carried out under a substantial handicap, for Lady Longford stubbornly refused to tell Maud Bloomsdale what they were looking for. When Maud asked, her ladyship would only say, “Never mind, Maud. I shall tell you what we are looking for when it has been found.” She did condescend to add that the object was some ten inches by twelve inches and perhaps an inch thick, from which Maud might have inferred that they were looking for a box or a stack of papers or a piece of wood or even a book. But beyond that generality, her ladyship would not go.

Now, this meant that the contents of every bureau drawer and shelf and every nook and cranny in every room (and of every box and bag and bundle in all the attics) had to be turned out onto a table, and when her ladyship had gone through it, it must then be put back in its proper place. Since Tidmarsh Manor contained twenty-two upstairs rooms, that was a great deal of turning out and putting back, as you can well imagine.

In the course of this, a number of things were found that had not previously been known to be lost, such as the lavender lace fichu that her ladyship had worn with her goingaway costume some fifty years before, and the polished turtle shell that her ladyship’s great uncle had brought home from the Galapagos Islands, where he had voyaged on the
Beagle
with that awful Mr. Darwin, in 1831. Oh, and also found was the silver-backed mirror that Lady Longford believed to have been stolen by the last upstairs maid but one, who had been accused of and summarily discharged for the theft. (I am very sorry to tell you that her ladyship was not discomfited by the discovery of the mirror, as you or I might have been, nor did she feel at all guilty for having falsely accused an innocent servant. In fact, she had forgotten all about the incident and was merely pleased to have the mirror back again.)

But the attics were finished, and the third-floor servants’ rooms and the second-floor bedrooms, and no book had been found. All that was left was the main downstairs rooms, the great dining room, and the drawing room. And when all these were done and still nothing had been found, there was only the library remaining. This was the hardest room to search, of course, for there were floor-to-ceiling shelves on three walls, all of them lined with a great variety of books. Yes, books. Books of all sizes and dimensions.

It was by now beginning to dawn upon on her ladyship that her deceased husband might not have simply mislaid his valuable book. Instead, he might have deliberately hidden it, although why he should do such an inconsiderate thing (and especially why he should not have told her about it!), she could not begin to guess.

But if he
had
hidden it, what better place than his library? He might have tucked the precious book inside some larger volume, or perhaps behind a row of volumes. Which meant, of course, that Lady Longford had to see that every single one of the thousands of volumes in the library was taken off the shelves and opened in front of her, to be sure that it did not contain the book she was looking for.

At this important juncture, a spanner was tossed into Lady Longford’s works, for Maud Bloomsdale’s mother fell ill. Old Mrs. Bloomsdale lived alone and had no one to care for her, so Maud naturally asked Lady Longford for a few days’ holiday. To which request, her ladyship quite naturally said no (which is what she always said when one of the servants asked for time off), and required Maud to choose between her employer and her mother.

To Maud’s everlasting credit, she chose her mother and then went home to care for her, leaving Lady Longford to look for another upstairs maid. (Please don’t worry about Maud. I am pleased to tell you that, after her mother was well again, she was hired by Mrs. Kittredge at Raven Hall, which is a far better and kinder situation at a far better and more rewarding salary than she could ever have earned at Tidmarsh Manor.)

But since Maud was now gone and her ladyship did not trust the young tweeny—a girl named Lucy—to carry out her search, she had no other choice than to ask Mrs. Beever. So the very next morning, Lady Longford summoned her cook from the kitchen and ordered her to report to the library at two every afternoon for the next three days.

When she heard this request, Mrs. Beever felt decidedly uneasy. She was a round-faced, plump, and cheerful lady who had cooked at Tidmarsh Manor for many years and felt most at home in the kitchen.

“An’ what’ll your ladyship be wantin’ me to do in the library?” she asked uncertainly.

Lady Longford waved a hand at the shelves (for they were in the library whilst this discussion was going on). “We will be searching every book and each shelf. The task should take, I estimate, about four days. You will remove the books from the shelves and show them to me. Then you will dust and replace them.”

Mrs. Beever was taken aback, and never being one to keep silent, she said what came first to her mind. “Well, mum, if ye’ll forgive me for sayin’ so, couldn’t t’ job wait until t’ new maid comes? If it’s only takin’ down and dustin’ books, I mean. If I’m dustin’ books in t’ library, I woan’t be cookin’ in t’ kitchen, for I canna be in two places at once. Supper is bound to suffer, as well as t’ next day’s dinner. An’ t’ plums are comin’ on this week. Who’ll make t’ jelly, if I’m dustin’ books?”