Mademoiselle At Arms, Elizabeth Bailey [bearly read books txt] 📗

In the quiet of an autumn afternoon, the deserted mansion slept. Or appeared to do so. Concealed among the trees that edged the estate grounds, the watchers paused.

There were two of them. Men of action by the scarlet coats with their grey facings—insignia of the county militia. Cocked hats and buckled swords spoke of rank. Officers were these. Too skilled to advertise their presence by a show of arms and men. The spy—if there was one hiding out in the late Jarvis Remenham’s empty house—would be taken unawares.

Wary they might be. Sanguine they were not. In fact, one of them was downright sceptical.

‘Seems quiet enough,’ observed the junior officer, his gaze raking the shuttered windows of the building’s grey stone frontage.

‘Don’t be too sure,’ responded Major Gerald Alderley on a dry note. ‘I am expecting a huge rat to emerge any second. Waving a white flag, naturally.’

Captain Roding grinned. ‘Why not a French flag?’

‘Because I don’t believe that fool Pottiswick could tell French from Arabic, even if he heard it as he says he did—which I take leave to doubt.’

The lodgekeeper had been in fine fettle by the time Major Alderley had produced his investigatory force at the gates.

‘Gabbling and muttering in a foreign tongue, that’s what I heard, sir,’ had declared the gap-toothed ancient, when he told them of the initial foray he had made, sneaking around the house in the dark. ‘One of they Frenchies, that’s what I say—if it ain’t a ghost.’

‘A French ghost?’

‘Well, it ain’t a rat this time, Major, I can promise you that,’ Pottiswick had rejoined, his tone affronted.

‘It had better not be, by God,’ had barked Captain Hilary Roding.

Gerald sympathised with his friend’s irritation. The last time Pottiswick had called out the militia on suspicion of intruders in Remenham House, a large rodent had been all the spoil. It had certainly caused some havoc in the uninhabited mansion, chewing through Holland covers to get at the furniture beneath, and knocking down a fire guard and a couple of wooden stands. Truth to tell, more damage had been done in the enthusiastic chase carried out by the militiamen detailed to catch it.

‘I never met a rat what wandered about the place with a lantern, I didn’t,’ grumbled the old lodgekeeper aggrievedly.

‘Did you see the man?’ Gerald asked.

‘No, but I seen the light, sir. Moving room to room it was.’ He added pointedly, ‘Early this morning that were. I sent a message straight.’

‘We had other matters on hand this morning,’ Roding told him sharply.

Fiercely defensive, as usual. It both pleased and amused Gerald that Hilary adhered rigidly to protocol before the men, no matter what he might say to his major on other occasions. Besides, it was not the lodgekeeper’s business to know that “other matters” included a reluctance on Gerald’s part to allow his little company to conduct the search without him, and he’d had an engagement this morning.

‘I suppose you think I can’t manage it myself,’ had complained Captain Roding sarcastically.

‘Nothing of the sort,’ argued Gerald. ‘But on the off chance—slim, I grant you—that there is a spy down there, I don’t want to miss the fun.’

The possibility was indeed remote, for there had been no trouble with France since the Peace of Versailles had been signed six years ago. But the current rumblings of internal discontent across the Channel were productive of unease in certain quarters. Even an unlikely episode such as this could not be ignored. Besides, Gerald would not for the world have passed up the chance of a little excitement.

It seemed at this moment, however, that there was not going to be any “fun”, and Captain Roding said so.

‘How disappointing,’ mourned Gerald. ‘Ah, well, we’ll check the back and then go home.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ exploded his second-in-command. ‘I know you, Gerald. We won’t drag you away until you’ve been through the place from top to bottom.’

Alderley laughed. ‘Just around it, Hilary, that’s all.’ He added on a teasing note, ‘Though if there’s anything suspicious we can always get the key from Pottiswick.’

Hilary Roding groaned, but obediently followed Gerald as he began to make his way through the trees towards the back to a vantage point from where they might examine the rear of Remenham House. One glance swept across the place and it was immediately apparent that Pottiswick had not, this time, been mistaken.

‘Aha,’ grunted Gerald with satisfaction, squinting up at the two open shutters on the second floor. ‘A French rat with exceedingly long arms, I see.’

‘Gad, there is someone there,’ exclaimed Hilary beside him, shading his eyes with one hand. The warm September sun fell strongly on this part of the grounds, uninterrupted by trees, its light bouncing off the glass in the mansion’s walls. He added succinctly, ‘Windows are open.’

Even as they watched, a shadow passed across one of the apertures.

‘I’ll get the key,’ said Roding, turning abruptly.

Gerald stayed him. ‘Wait! No time for that. We’re going in.’

Hilary eyed him. ‘And how do you propose to get in?’

‘Scullery window.’

‘You’re going to break into the house? You’re mad.’

‘Nonsense, it’ll give Pottiswick something genuine to complain about,’ said Gerald cheerfully, moving to the edge of the trees. ‘Besides, I don’t want the men blundering in here and frightening off our spy. Come on.’

‘You’re incorrigible,’ scolded Hilary, beginning to follow. ‘No one would credit that you are three years older than I.’

‘You always were an old sobersides, even as a boy,’ retorted the major, who was close on thirty now, yet as ripe for excitement as he had been on receiving his first commission at sixteen. Ten years of military life had taught him caution, but only strengthened a fearless zest for diving into any promising adventure with unalloyed enjoyment.

Out of sight of that tell-tale window, the two officers darted across the grounds, speedily gaining the lee of the mansion walls. Hugging them, they crept stealthily around the house, Major Alderley leading, and wasting—so his captain acidly commented—a deal of time checking the windows and doors. When he tried the scullery door, and would have moved on, Hilary intervened.

‘Thought you were going to break in here,’ he said, in an impatient whisper.

‘We may have to,’ Gerald answered thoughtfully, staring at the window to one side.

‘But you said—’

Gerald tutted. ‘Housebreaking, Hilary? I take the matter of housebreaking very seriously, I’ll have you know.’ He quirked an eyebrow. ‘I thought, you see, that we might as well enter by the same way our intruder had done.’

Roding looked struck. ‘You mean there isn’t any evidence of a break-in.’

‘Precisely.’

‘That’s odd.’

‘Precisely,’ Gerald repeated. He glanced up. The open windows were above them now and, unless the intruder were to lean out, they could not possibly be seen. ‘Let’s check the rest of it and then I suppose we will have to break in.’

‘For God’s sake,’ protested his junior. ‘I thought you said you take housebreaking very seriously.’

‘I do. I intend to remain very serious indeed while I’m doing it.’

‘Dunderhead. Why don’t I just go and get the key from Pottiswick?’

Alderley flicked a glance back at him over his shoulder. ‘You can if you like.’

‘Yes, and leave you to break in on your own. No, I thank you.’

Hilary Roding, despite the fact that he was both a younger and slighter man than his friend—although wiry and tough with an attractive countenance that had won him the heart of an extremely eligible young lady—had a rooted conviction, as Gerald well knew, that it was not safe to leave Alderley to his own reckless devices. It occasionally troubled the major that Hilary’s staunch loyalty had led him into hair-raising exploits at Gerald’s side, for he was perfectly aware that Hilary would not have dreamed of deserting him.

They had completed a circuit of the mansion before Roding’s frustration burst out. ‘How in God’s name did the wretched fellow get in then?’

‘Dug a tunnel?’ suggested Gerald, halting next to a pair of French windows at the front. ‘Or flew in by balloon, perhaps.’

‘Oh yes, or walked through the walls, I dare say. And if you mean to use that dagger to slip the lock, you’ll make enough noise to bring ten spies down on us.’

But Major