‘None of Sir Richard’s vehicles, my lady, sporting or otherwise, is missing from the stables,’ said Porson, relishing the cumulative effect of his disclosures.
‘He is riding, then!’
‘I have ascertained from the head groom, my lady, that none of Sir Richard’s horses has been abstracted. The head groom has not seen Sir Richard since yesterday morning.’
‘Good Gad!’ muttered George, his eyes starting with dismay at the hideous thought which presented itself to him. ‘No, no, he would not do that!’
‘Be quiet, George! For heaven’s sake, be quiet!’ Louisa cried sharply. ‘Why, what nonsensical notion have you taken into your head? I am sure it is most provoking of Richard to slip off like this, but as for – I won’t have you say such things! Ten to one, he has gone off to watch some odious sporting event: prize-fighting, I dare say! He will be home presently.’
‘But he didn’t sleep at home!’ George reminded her. ‘And I’m bound to say he wasn’t cold stone sober when he left Almack’s last night. I don’t mean he was badly foxed, but you know what he’s like when he’s –’
‘I am thankful to say that I know nothing of the kind!’ retorted Louisa. ‘If he was not sober, it would account for his erratic behaviour.’
‘Erratic behaviour! I must say, Louisa, that is a fine way to talk when poor Ricky may be at the bottom of the river,’ exclaimed George, roused to noble courage.
She changed colour, but said faintly: ‘How can you be so absurd? Don’t say such things, I beg of you!’
The butler coughed. ‘I beg your lordship’s pardon, but if I might say so, Sir Richard would hardly change his raiment for the execution of – of what I apprehend your lordship means.’
‘No. No, very true! He would not, of course!’ agreed George, relieved.
‘Moreover, my lord, Biddle reports that Sir Richard’s drawers and wardrobe have been ransacked, and various articles of clothing abstracted. Upon going to rouse Sir Richard this morning, Biddle found his room in the greatest disorder, as though Sir Richard had made his preparations for a journey in haste. Furthermore, my lord, Biddle informed me that a portmanteau and a small cloak-bag are missing from the cupboard in which they are customarily kept.’
George gave a sudden croak of laughter. ‘Bolted, by Gad! Yoicks! gone awa-ay!’
‘George! ’
‘I don’t care!’ said George defiantly. ‘I’m devilish glad he has bolted!’
‘But there was no need!’ Louisa said, forgetting that Porson was in the room. ‘No one was constraining him to marry –’ she caught Porson’s eye, and stopped short.
‘I should inform your ladyship,’ said Porson, apparently deaf to her indiscreet utterance, ‘that there were several other Peculiar Circumstances attached to Sir Richard’s disappearance.’
‘Good heavens, you talk as though he has been spirited away by magic!’ said Louisa impatiently. ‘What circumstances, my good man?’
‘If your ladyship will excuse me, I will fetch them for your inspection,’ said Porson, and bowed himself out.
Husband and wife were left to stare at one another in perplexity.
‘Well!’ said George, not without satisfaction, ‘you see now what comes of plaguing a man out of his mind!’
‘I didn’t! George, it is unjust of you to say so! Pray, how could I force him to offer for Melissa if he did not wish to? I am persuaded his flight has nothing whatever to do with that affair.’
‘No man will bear being teased to do something he don’t want to do,’ said George.
‘Then all I have to say is that Richard is a bigger coward than I would have believed possible! I am sure, if only he had told me frankly that he did not wish to marry Melissa I should not have said another word about it.’
‘Ha!’ ejaculated George, achieving a sardonic laugh.
He escaped reproof by Porson’s coming back into the room, bearing certain articles which he laid carefully upon the table. In great astonishment, Lord and Lady Trevor gazed at a Paisley shawl, a crumpled cravat, and some short strands of guinea-gold hair, curling appropriately enough into a shape resembling a question-mark.
‘What in the world – ?’ exclaimed Louisa.
‘These articles, my lady, were discovered by the under-footman upon his entering the library this morning,’ said Porson. ‘The shawl, which neither Biddle nor myself can remember to have seen before, was lying on the floor; the cravat had been thrown into the grate; and the – er – lock of hair – was found under the shawl.’
‘Well, upon my word!’ said George, putting up his glass the better to inspect the articles. He pointed his glass at the cravat. ‘That tells its own tale! Poor Ricky must have come in last night in a bad state. I dare say his head was aching: mine would have been, if I had drunk half the brandy he tossed off yesterday. I see it all. There he was, pledged to call on Saar this morning – no way out of it – head on fire! He tugged at his cravat, felt as though he must choke, and ruined the thing – and no matter how far gone he was, Ricky would never wear a crumpled necktie! There he was, sitting in a chair, very likely, and running his hands through his hair, in the way a man does –’
‘Richard never yet disarranged his hair, and no matter how drunk he may have been, he did not pull a curl of that colour out of his own head!’ interrupted Louisa. ‘Moreover, it has been cut off. Anyone can see that!’
George levelled his glass at the gleaming curl. A number of emotions flitted across his rather stolid countenance. He drew a breath. ‘You’re quite right, Louisa,’ he said. ‘Well, I never would have believed it! The sly dog!’
‘You need not wait, Porson!’ Louisa said sharply.
‘Very good, my lady. But I should perhaps inform your ladyship that the under-footman found the candles burning in the library when he entered it this morning.’
‘I cannot see that it signifies in the least,’ replied Louisa, waving him aside.
He withdrew. George, who was holding the curl in the palm of his hand, said: ‘Well, I can’t call anyone to mind with hair of this colour. To be sure, there were one or two opera-dancers, but Ricky’s not at all the sort of man to want ’em to cut off their hair for him. But there’s no doubt about one thing, Louisa: this curl was a keepsake.’
‘Thank you, George, I had already realized that. Yet I thought I knew all the respectable women of Richard’s acquaintance! One would say that kind of keepsake must have belonged to his salad days. I am sure he is much too unromantic now to cherish a lock of hair!’
‘And he threw it away,’ George said, shaking his head. ‘You know, it’s devilish sad, Louisa, upon my word it is! Threw it away, because he was on the eve of offering for that Brandon-iceberg!’
‘Very affecting! And having thrown it away, he then ran away himself – not, you will admit, making any offer at all! And where did the shawl come from?’ She picked it up as she spoke, and shook it out. ‘Extremely creased! Now why?’
‘Another keepsake,’ George said. ‘Crushed it in his hands, poor old Ricky – couldn’t bear the recollections it conjured up – flung it away!’
‘Oh, fiddle!’ said Louisa, exasperated. ‘Well, Porson, what is it now?’
The butler, who had come back into the room, said primly: ‘The Honourable Cedric Brandon, my lady, to see Sir Richard. I thought perhaps your ladyship would wish to receive him.’
‘I don’t suppose he can throw the least light on this mystery, but you may as well show him in,’ said Louisa. ‘Depend upon it,’ she added to her husband, when Porson had withdrawn himself again, ‘he will have come to learn why Richard did not keep his engagement with Saar this morning. I am sure I do not know what I am to say to him!’
‘If you ask me, Cedric won’t blame Richard,’ said George. ‘They tell me he was talking pretty freely at White’s yesterday. Foxed, of
course. How you and your mother can want Ricky to marry into that family is what beats me!’
‘We have known the Brandons all our lives,’ Louisa said defensively. ‘I don’t pretend that –’ She broke off, as the Honourable Cedric walked into the room, and stepped forward, with her hand held out. ‘How do you do, Cedric? I am afraid Richard is not at home. We – think he must have been called away suddenly on urgent affairs.’
‘Taken my advice, has he?’ said Cedric, saluting her hand with careless grace. ‘ “You run, Ricky! Don’t do it!” that’s what I told him. Told him I’d sponge on him for the rest of his days, if he was fool enough to let himself be caught.’
‘I wonder that you should talk in that vulgar way!’ said Louisa. ‘Of course he has not run! I dare say he will be back any moment now. It was excessively remiss of him not to have sent a note round to inform Lord Saar that he could not wait on him this morning, as he had engaged himself to do, but –’
‘You’ve got that wrong,’ interrupted Cedric. ‘No engagement at all. Melissa told him to call on m’father; he didn’t say he would. Wormed it out of Melissa myself an hour ago. Lord, you never saw anyone in such a rage! What’s all this?’ His roving eye had alighted on the relics laid out upon the table. ‘A lock of hair, by Jove! Devilish pretty hair too!’
‘Found in the library this morning,’ said George porten-tously, ignoring his wife’s warning frown.
‘Here? Ricky?’ demanded Cedric. ‘You’re bamming me!’
‘No, it is perfectly true. We cannot understand it.’
Cedric’s eyes danced. ‘By all that’s famous! Who’d have thought it, though? Well, that settles our affairs! Devilish inconvenient, but damme, I’m glad he’s bolted! Always liked Ricky – never wanted to see him bound for perdition with the rest of us! But we’re done-up now, and no mistake! The diamonds have gone.’
‘What?’ Louisa cried. ‘Cedric, not the Brandon necklace?’
‘That’s it. Last sheet-anchor thrown out to the windward – gone like that!’ He snapped his fingers in the air, and laughed. ‘I came to tell Ricky I’d accept his offer to buy me a pair of colours, and be off to the Wars.’
‘But how? Where?’ gasped Louisa.
‘Stolen. My mother took it to Bath with her. Never would stir without the thing, more’s the pity! I wonder m’father didn’t sell it years ago. Only thing he didn’t sell, except Saar Court, and that’ll have to go next. My mother wouldn’t hear of parting with the diamonds.’
‘But Cedric, how stolen? Who took it?’
‘Highwaymen. My mother sent off a courier post-haste to m’father. Chaise stopped somewhere near Bath – two fellows with masks and horse-pistols – Sophia screeching like a hen – my mother swooning – outriders taken by surprise – one of ’em winged. And off went the necklace. Which is what I can’t for the life of me understand.’
‘How terrible! Your poor Mama! I am so sorry! It is an appalling loss!’
‘Yes, but how the devil did they find the thing?’ said Cedric. ‘That’s what I want to know.’
‘But surely if they took Lady Saar’s jewel-case –’
‘The necklace wasn’t in it. I’ll lay my last shilling on that. My mother had a hiding-place for it – devilish cunning notion – always put it there when she travelled. Secret pocket behind one of the squabs.’
‘Good Gad, do you mean to say someone divulged the hiding-place to the rascals?’ said George.
‘Looks mighty like it, don’t it?’
‘Who knew of it? If you can discover the traitor, you may yet get the necklace back. Are you sure of all your servants?’
‘I’m sure none of them – Lord, I don’t know!’ Cedric said, rather hastily. ‘My mother wants the Bow Street Runners set on to it, but m’father don’t think it’s the least use. And now here’s Ricky bolted, on top of everything! The old man will go off in an apoplexy!’
‘Really, Cedric, you must not talk so of your Papa!’ Louisa expostulated. ‘And we don’t know that Richard has – has bolted ! Indeed, I am sure it’s no such thing!’
‘He’ll be a fool if he hasn’t,’ said Cedric. ‘What do you think, George?’
‘I don’t know,’ George answered. ‘It is very perplexing. I own, when I first heard of his disappearance – for you must know that he did not sleep in his bed last night, and when I saw him he was foxed – I felt the gravest alarm. But –’
‘Suicide, by God!’ Cedric gave a shout of laughter. ‘I must tell Melissa that! Driven to death! Ricky! Oh, by all that’s famous!’
‘Cedric, you are quite abominable!’ said Louisa roundly. ‘Of course Richard has not committed suicide! He has merely gone away. I’m sure I don’t know where, and if you say anything of the sort to Melissa I shall never forgive you! In fact, I beg you will tell Melissa nothing more than that Richard has been called away on an urgent matter of business.’
‘What, can’t I tell her about the lock of yaller hair? Now, don’t be a spoil-sport, Louisa!’
‘Odious creature!’
‘We believe the lock of hair to be a relic of some long-forgotten affair,’ said George. ‘Possibly a boy-and-girl attachment. It would be gross impropriety to mention it beyond these walls.’
‘If it comes to that, old fellow, what about the gross impropriety of poking and prying into Ricky’s drawers?’ asked Cedric cheerfully.
‘We did no such thing!’ Louisa cried. ‘It was found upon the floor in the library!’
‘Dropped? Discarded? Seems to me Ricky’s been leading a double life. I’d have said myself he never troubled much about females. Won’t I roast him when I see him!’
‘You will do nothing of the sort. Oh dear, I wish to heaven I knew where he has gone, and what it all means!’
‘I’ll tell you where he’s gone!’ offered Cedric. ‘He’s gone to find the yaller-haired charmer of his youth. Not a doubt of it! Lord, I’d give a monkey to see him, though. Ricky on a romantic adventure!’
‘Now you are being absurd!’ said Louisa. ‘If one thing is certain, it is that Richard has not one grain of romance in his disposition, while as for adventure – ! I dare say he would shudder at the mere thought of it. Richard, my dear Cedric, is first, last, and always a man of fashion, and he will never do anything unbefitting a Corinthian. You may take my word for that !’
Four
The man of fashion, at that precise moment, was sleeping heavily in one corner of a huge green-and-gold Accommodation coach, swaying and rocking on its ponderous way to Bristol. The hour was two in the afternoon, the locality Calcot Green, west of Reading and the dreams troubling the repose of the man of fashion were extremely uneasy. He had endured some waking moments, when the coach had stopped with a lurch and a heave to take up or to set down passengers, to change horses, or to wait while a laggardly pike-keeper opened a gate upon the road. These moments had seemed to him more fraught with nightmare even than his dreams. His head was aching, his eyeballs seemed to be on fire, and a phantasmagoria of strange, unwelcome faces swam before his outraged vision. He had shut his eyes again with a groan, preferring his dreams to reality, but when the coach stopped at Calcot Green to put down a stout woman with a tendency to asthma, sleep finally deserted him, and he opened his eyes, blinked at the face of a precise-looking man in a suit of neat black, seated opposite him, ejaculated: ‘Oh, my God!’ and sat up.
‘Is your head very bad?’ asked a solicitous and vaguely familiar voice in his ear.
He turned his head, and encountered the enquiring gaze of Miss Penelope Creed. He looked at her in silence for a few moments; then he said: ‘I remember. Stagecoach – Bristol. Why, oh why, did I touch the brandy?’
An admonitory pinch made him recollect his surroundings. He found that there were three other persons in the coach, seated opposite to him, and that all were regarding him with inter
est. The precise-looking man, whom he judged to be an attorney’s clerk, was frankly disapproving; a woman in a poke-bonnet and a paduasoy shawl nodded to him in a motherly style, and said that he was like her second boy, who could not abide the rocking of the coach either; and a large man beside her, whom he took to be her husband, corroborated this statement by enunciating in a deep voice: ‘That’s right!’
Instinct took Sir Richard’s hand to his cravat; his fingers told him that it was considerably crumpled, like the tails of his blue coat. His curly-brimmed beaver seemed to add to the discomfort of his aching head; he took it off, and clasped his head in his hands, trying to throw off the lingering wisps of sleep. ‘Good God!’ he said thickly. ‘Where are we?’
‘Well, I am not quite sure, but we have passed Reading,’ replied Pen, rather anxiously surveying him.
‘Calcot Green, that’s where we are,’ volunteered the large man. ‘Stopped to set down someone. They ain’t a-worriting theirselves over the time-bill, that’s plain. I dare say the coachman’s stepped down for a drink.’
‘Ah, well!’ said his wife tolerantly. ‘It’ll be thirsty work, setting up on the box in the sun like he has to.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed the large man.
‘If the Company was to hear of it he would be turned off, and very rightly!’ said the clerk, sniffing. ‘The behaviour of these stagecoach-men is becoming a scandal.’
‘I’m sure there’s no call for people to get nasty if a man falls behind his time-bill a little,’ said the woman. ‘Live and let live, that’s what I say.’
Her husband assented to this in his usual fashion. The coach lurched forward again, and Pen said, under cover of the noise of the wheels and the horses’ hooves: ‘You kept on telling me that you were drunk, and now I see that you were. I was afraid you would regret coming with me.’
Sir Richard raised his head from his hands. ‘Drunk I most undoubtedly must have been, but I regret nothing except the brandy. When does this appalling vehicle reach Bristol?’