A Malevolent Manner (Patrick Pierce #1)

  *

  The basement storage room was dark, though not oppressively so. Its large space and high ceilings made it seem airy despite being largely underground. This effect was magnified by the limited number of items being stored at the Crow’s Nest. Jane had only counted a few crates in one corner and a collection of covered furniture in another when she had first entered days ago.

  It was largely the same tonight as she hunted through the crates. She placed her lamp down on one when she found what she was looking for. Two large crates were placed beside each other, slightly apart from the rest against the wall. Both were roughly the same size and made from wooden boards, but more importantly they were nailed shut. She tried to open one to verify if they had been packed with the correct cargo. When it didn’t budge she sighed with mild frustration and looked around for a crowbar or tool of some sort.

  Jane had overheard Mrs. Hobart giving instructions to Phillip that afternoon. She told him to pack the chairs Lord Cleaver had requested and to deliver them to Loch Dhu Island the next day. Realizing their plans were coming to fruition, she had immediately informed Lord Lodge.

  So now she found herself traipsing around the basement trying to finalize their steps towards escape. She had to remove the chairs, hide them, and then fashion the lids so that both her and Lodge could keep them shut while inside. But first she needed to get the crates open or their plans would be for nothing.

  Phillip was a good worker, but he could also be forgetful. She was hoping this was the case as she looked around the vicinity of the crates. She was rewarded when she found a jar of nails and a hammer by the wall. She had hoped that he would forget his tools once the crates were shut, and she was right. Picking up the hammer, Jane moved to the closest crate and began prying the lid open. He might have been forgetful; however Phillip was very strong and had hammered the lid down tight. She wedged the teeth of the hammer back in, heaved a second time, and was rewarded with a high pitched squeak as the lid opened a hair.

  She was about to try a third time when she heard footsteps behind her. She’d been so busy working on the crate that she hadn’t noticed the faint light of a second lamp and the presence of someone else. She spun around quickly with the hammer in her hands, eliciting a gasp from her interloper.

  “Well I never…” began Mrs. Hobart in breathless confusion.

  “You were right to call me Mrs Hobart,” said an iron voice blocked from Jane’s view by the darkness.

  “I knew I’d heard someone shuffling around,” stated the housekeeper, puffing her chest out with pride. She then turned back towards Jane aiming a sever glance of disapproval. “What are you doing down her girl? Explain yourself.”

  Jane opened her mouth to try and explain, but nothing seemed to come out. Multiple stories were swimming around in her head, waiting to be caught. But each one was more unbelievable than the last. This proved inconsequential, for when the owner of the iron voice emerged into the light, her mind went completely blank.

  “I imagine she’s trying to escape our lovely mountaintop retreat. Isn’t that right my dear?”

  Jane dropped her eyes to the ground, completely disoriented and confused.

  “Mr. Hobart should be down any second. When he arrives please have him escort Jane back to her room. I’ll allow you to come up with whatever punishment you see fit.”

  “As you say Lord Lodge,” the housekeeper acknowledged as he turned and left the basement.

  Jane couldn’t believe what had just happened. It didn’t make any sense for Lodge to have turned on her, when he wanted to escape as much as she did. Unless he still didn’t believe that she was really on his side and no longer working for Cleaver.

  Her thoughts were broken by the appearance of Mr. Hobart in the basement. After speaking briefly with his wife he turned towards Jane and motioned for her to follow him. She’d only seen Mr. Hobart briefly during her stay, mostly eating quietly in the kitchen at the end of a hard working day. He was a hard looking man with a creased leathery face who never smiled or spoke. In fact she couldn’t remember him ever uttering a single word. He was not a large man, but a hard life spent working and hunting dissuaded Jane from trying to flee. If he got a hold of her, his powerful hands looked like they could crush her like a vice. She dejectedly led the way out of the storage room, retracing her steps towards the stairwell that led to the servant’s area of the lodge.

  But before she could take her fist step up, a loud thud sounded from the back of the room. It had sounded like something heavy had fallen and both Jane and her escort stopped. Mr. Hobart squinted into the darkness, and then called out to his wife. When no reply came, he started towards the direction the sound had emanated from. Turning towards Jane, he opened his mouth to issue what she assumed was a warning to not move. However Jane was stunned when his face seemed to freeze and no sound came out.

  “Mr. Hobart…” she whispered, taking a step towards him. When he didn’t acknowledge her, she reached out to touch him. She raised her hand up slowly, extending her index finger to his face. But before the probing finger could make contact, Mr. Hobart fell backwards creating a similar crash as before.

  “Well that took a little bit longer than I had anticipated.”

  Jane shifted her awestruck gaze from the crumpled body on the floor to Lord Lodge’s elegant frame descending the stairs.

  “Don’t worry, they’re not dead,” he pronounced as he knelt by the body, finding a pulse. Satisfied he stood up and grabbed one of Mr. Hobart’s arms. “Care to give me a hand?”

  Jane nodded, needing to do something to calm her racing mind. She leaned over and grabbed the other hand, helping Lodge drag the body to the wooden crates. They laid Mr. Hobart beside his wife, where her pulse was also checked.

  “What is going on?” inquired Jane stiffly.

  “Start working on those crates again,” he replied obscurely, handing her the dropped hammer she had previously been using. “We haven’t much time before dawn.”

  Jane grabbed it from his hand but didn’t move towards the crates. She simply stood glaring at him, waiting for a real answer.

  “I had to get the Hobart’s down here without drawing too much attention. I asked her to watch the basement and have her husband stay ready as I thought there might be prowlers here tonight. I also slipped something into their tea so that they would not leave this basement on their own steam.”

  “What about the plan?!”

  “The plan was too believable,” he sighed, grabbing the hammer from her and moving towards the crates. He explained as he worked to remove the lids. “It was a good plan, but it left us vulnerable inside these wooden boxes. Plus Cleaver knew all about it.”

  “I thought that was the point,” she replied in exasperation. “That he would never believe it was the true plan if we were telling him about it.”

  “But he might still want to cover all the options and have his men watch for these crates.” With a final push he opened the second crate. “Help me get these chairs out will you.”

  They each went to a crate and removed the packing material, and then the chairs wrapped within them. The chairs were carried to a group of old furniture being stored under a heavy canvass tarp on the other side of the room.

  “Then why did we even tell him about the chair delivery plan?”

  “It had to appear that we were being really clever. Cleaver thinks he’s clever and he looks for that in others. More importantly he relishes in being cleverer than anyone else. So we provide him with multiple avenues to keep his mind turning.”

  “Then to keep it turning you threw in a second possibility,” she said, slowly seeing Victor Lodge’s genius. “The rope you asked from Phillip?”

  “Precisely. We tell him about the crate plan, but not the plan to descend the cliff face with ropes. However I was sure that info would get to him from the groundskeeper. So now he’s faced with two escape plans, provided to him from two different sources.”

  “So what are we doi
ng here if we’re not going to use the crates?”

  “We are going to use them,” he replied lifting up Mrs. Hobart. “We’re going to use them as a ruse. Help me get them in.”

  The pair awkwardly got both bodies into the two crates, closing them with only a couple nails. When this was finished Lodge walked over to another dark corner of the room and dragged back a couple long lengths or rope and box of wooden pulleys.

  “So the Hobart’s take our place in the crates and we escape down the cliff? That doesn’t sound much safer.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Neither one of us has the skill to rappel down the mountainside. When the alarm is raised from our escape we need to have multiple avenues for our foes to pursue.”

  “Divide and conquer?”

  “Indeed. There’s no direct communications between here and the Manor, therefore Cleaver must have left some instructions to his men anticipating our escape. Instructions that they will not have time to debate when they discover we’re gone.”

  “We give him two options of escape, forcing him to plan for both,” Jane thought aloud. “That allows us to predict their reaction. Ingenious.”

  “When we’re gone his men will have two instructions; go to the bottom of the cliff to catch us or intercept the wagon carrying the crates. He has to respect either plan equally, since he won’t be here himself to discover any telltale clues as to our real method of escape.”

  “Which is…?”

  “Why, out the front door of course.”