‘Someone’s at home,’ Garrick said. He was standing on the driver’s box. ‘I can just see the roof of the main house and there’s a thin trickle of smoke from one of the chimneys at the side. Kitchen, perhaps.’
‘Then we definitely need James and Clem. It is a big house, we have no idea what to expect and if Arabella is inside, she may need protection in case they put up a resistance.’
‘Can’t we get help from the local constable or magistrates?’ I asked.
Lucian snorted. ‘Without a warrant? On nothing but suspicions that, if we spell them out, are slanderous?’
‘I suppose not. But I hate just giving up and going away again.’ I looked around. There was a small copse of trees and shrubs opposite the gates. ‘You go back and fetch the others, but leave me here. I will hide in the trees and I can watch for anyone coming in or out. What if Arabella is in there and he moves her before we get back with help? At least I can see which way they go and describe the vehicle.’
Lucian looked at the copse and its dense undergrowth, then up and down the road, then back at me, frowning. ‘All right. Here, take this money, I do not like to leave you with nothing, although we will be back in three hours at most. I will try and be faster. Just stay well out of sight.’
‘I will. May I have a pistol? Just in case.’
‘Can you fire one?’
‘No, and I would much rather not. But I can point it, even if it is empty.’
Lucian leaned into the carriage and came out with one of the Manton pistols. He checked it before handing it to me. ‘It is not loaded, but if you need to use it to bluff, cock the hammer so it looks as though it is. But do not get seen in the first place.’
‘I won’t.’ It was a nice thick wood with plenty of places where I could sit and hide, yet keep the gates under surveillance.
It was also a staggeringly boring wood as I discovered after about an hour. Assorted birds came and inspected me as I sat on a fallen tree screened from the road by a clump of hawthorn bushes. I inspected them back. A squirrel came to join in, which at least was interesting because it was a red one, not the grey variety I was used to.
I had a pee behind another bush and accidentally encountered some stinging nettles at the same time and then spent ten minutes finding dock leaves, which didn’t work any better at soothing the sting than they had when I was a child.
There was some excitement when I heard sounds out on the road, but it was a man with a horse and two-wheeled dung cart plodding along. That left a memorable odour for some time.
I got up, walked up and down to stretch my legs and studied the gate again. It would be easy to climb. But I had said I would wait. I wondered what the time was. At least an hour had crawled by and there might be another two before Lucian returned. I was restless with boredom and queasy with hyped-up nerves that had no outlet in action.
I prowled back to the gate. I could be over in moments then I could creep a little closer to the house, have a look and be back long before Lucian and the others returned. After all, I reasoned as I tramped up and down, I had only promised not to be seen, I hadn’t said anything about not getting inside the grounds.
Oh, to hell with it. I had another good look up and down the road, then grabbed hold and let the first piece of ornate metalwork take my weight.
The hinges creaked and groaned and the iron shed rust like red snow, but it was as easy as climbing the wall bars in a school gym and certainly more secure than the ivy we had used that morning. I dropped to the other side and went to peer in at the lodge windows. That did not look as though anyone had used it for years, so I went on up the curving driveway keeping close to the edge and the overgrown shrubbery that bordered it. The bushes were almost as thick as the coppice outside the gate and at any sound I could be under cover in a moment. It was, I told myself, no different from hiding in the wood.
The driveway opened out into a wide space that had probably once been circular when the grass had been kept in order. The house was old – Charles II, I thought. Or possibly it was even older, although the mass of ivy that clad parts of it made it hard to be sure. It was built of brick with stone at the corners and was symmetrical, with a double set of curving steps to the front door and what looked like a semi-basement. Above that three stories rose up, topped with a row of attic windows breaking the line of the roof.
Stone walls to the height of the top of the main ground floor windows curved away on either side. On the right was a gate, perhaps to the gardens, and on the left was a large open arch which must lead to the stables. The chimney at the far end nearest the stable arch had a thin trail of smoke rising from it and I guessed Garrick was correct and that was where the service section was. So there was at least one person in the building.
There was no sign of a vehicle other than the wheel tracks and those looked as though several carriages had been and gone recently – or perhaps the same one repeatedly. The width was all the same and iron-clad coach wheels had no d
istinguishing tread like modern tyres.
I had gone far enough, I knew that. As I turned to go back I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. It was high up and for a moment I thought it must have been a pigeon flying over the roof. Then I saw it again, something pale behind one of the attic windows. It was hard to make out, even when I shaded my eyes and squinted, but what it looked like to me was someone in a pale gown, their hands on either side of the window frame, staring out. Staring out like a prisoner might.
Definitely time to return and wait for the others. I edged backwards and as I moved I thought the head of the figure moved too. She had seen me and, I realised, she was blonde. I raised a hand, waved, and the next moment she had been pulled round, away from the window. I could see a shadowy figure, much larger, looming behind her, a movement that was, surely, a raised hand.
I ran without thinking, not back down the drive, but to the door in the flanking wall. It opened reluctantly, the hinges rusted, the foliage jamming it, but there was enough space to squeeze through into the wreckage of what must once have been a fine formal garden.
What, I asked myself, do you think you are doing? This was incredibly risky, I knew that, but I found I simply could not turn my back on that pale figure, that prisoner in the attic. The violence of the way she was pulled back chilled me. I was a police officer, even if I was only a barely-trained Special, and help was at least an hour away. If that was Arabella I would have given her hope and I could not just leave her.
There was no semi-basement along this back wall of the house, only occasional small windows low to the ground, dark and clogged with dirt and cobwebs. A small flight of steps led up to a glazed door and I tried it, but it was locked shut and, desperate as I was to get in, I dared not risk the sound of breaking glass. Then I saw that one of the basement windows was already broken. It took a few minutes to pick the remaining glass out of the frame so I could look in without cutting my throat but I managed it without slicing the end off a finger.
There was a drop of about six feet to the floor of a small, empty room. Buoyed up by having found an entry I wriggled round so I could edge over, feet first and stomach down, and then hung onto the frame to break the fall. It was not until my feet hit the ground with a thump that I wondered what I would do if the door was locked, because there was no way I could reach to climb out of the window and there wasn’t a scrap of furniture, not even a crate, in the room.
When I tried it, the door opened onto a dark passageway and I retreated back inside to contemplate the inescapable fact that I might have been trapped. I wasted a moment giving myself a mental kicking for behaving like the heroines who sail blithely into the haunted castle ignoring the bats flitting overhead, the sign saying Beware of the Vampires and the locals all industriously sharpening stakes and harvesting garlic.
I felt in my pocket, feeling rather more sympathy with the numerous TSTL heroines I had ranted at in novels or on film. I obviously had never taken the effect of adrenaline into account. The unloaded pistol was still there, but that was all I had in the way of stakes and garlic. I looked around in the gloom and found a plank with a long nail in it, pulled that out and pocketed it, then went out into the passageway again. Everywhere smelled of damp and musty disuse. There was light at the end, furthest from the area where the chimney was smoking, so I tiptoed down towards it and found it was coming from an opening onto a flight of uncarpeted service stairs. They led upwards, towards where I wanted to go, and the dust lay thick and unmarked on them which meant no-one had come this way for some time.