The Royal Scamp (17 page)

“My Cathy tells me she has found herself a beau,”
her brother said to Esther. “A captain of the Guards, if you please.”

“That was quick work!”
Esther exclaimed. “You were only there for a few days, were you not?”

Cathy darted a guilty look at her brother, making Esther suspect the young man had been picked up in some unladylike manner.

“Captain Williams was a neighbor at home in Northumberland,”
Beau explained. “It was not quite so unseemly as you are thinking, Esther. But you won’t have time to meet your captain when we go to London, Cathy. It will be just a quick trip to pick up your costume.”

Cathy wandered to the window, thence to the mirror to pat her curls. “And a new bonnet. You promised me a new bonnet, Beau,”
she said over her shoulder.

“Indeed I did, and you shall have it. Perhaps you would accompany us, Esther?”
he suggested.

A trip to London was always welcome, and with the ball approaching, Esther wanted a few frills for her own toilette. The live flowers for her costume would wilt uncommonly fast, and silk flowers were not available locally. “I shouldn’t mind going for a few hours,”
she said.

They talked awhile and tried to become acquainted. Unfortunately the ladies had little in common. Cathy was not interested in books or local history or such ladylike occupations as painting, embroidery, or playing the piano. Cards were declared a “dead bore.”
She inquired for the shops and asked whether there would be waltzing at the ball. She did a few waltz steps to show Esther she was familiar with the moves.

After a glass of wine and half an hour’s desultory talk, Esther escaped. “Let us meet early for breakfast downstairs tomorrow, Miss Fletcher,”
she suggested.

“Better for Cathy to rest up for the trip, I think,”
Beau decided, “She’ll dine here, and we’ll meet at ten.”
Cathy gave an impatient pout and pulled at her curls.

Esther thought the girl’s restlessness might be due to her long incarceration in the room. Beau was overly cautious of her health. There didn’t seem to be a thing wrong with her but boredom. He escorted Esther to the door and thanked her for coming. She stopped off to visit Lady Gloria and her aunt to pass a little time. They were not playing cards that evening, but gossiping.

“It gave me quite a turn, I can tell you!”
Lady Gloria was saying.

Esther clenched her jaw for the latest injury inflicted on her client. What was it this time? A fly in her soup, curdled cream, damp sheets?

The birdlike head turned to the door. “Ah, here she is now. I was just telling your aunt, Esther, that you have a stowaway in your attic. I was up looking for a costume—Mr. Ramsay gave me permission—and what did I see in the corner but a wad of old clothes made into a mattress, and a bottle of wine. In the corner beneath the east turret window. There were bread crumbs scattered about, too. That will encourage rats, my dear. I told Mr. Ramsay to clean it up.”

Esther stared in consternation. “In my attic? Who on earth could it have been?”
she asked.

“Your manager thinks it was Captain Johnnie. Lud, to think of him being right above our heads, and none of us knowing a thing about it.”

“When did this happen?”

“Just before dark, dear. There was still twilight at the windows. Of course I wasn’t alone. One of the upstairs girls came with me. We had Mr. Ramsay up to look around. He’ll tell you all about it.”

“Why was I not called?”

“You were with Miss Fletcher. What is she like?”

“A pretty ninny,”
Esther said, already opening the door. “Oh, incidentally, Auntie, I shall be going to London with them tomorrow. I want to pick up a few things for the ball.”

Making a grand appearance at the ball was of prime importance, and Lady Brown decided to permit the trip. “Oh, dear! Make sure you are back well before dark.”

Esther fled down to Buck’s office. “Buck, what is this about Captain Johnnie hiding in our attics?”

Buck shook his head and expelled air through his pursed lips. “Someone was there, no denying. He had himself a bed made up and two empty wine bottles on the floor. He must have made quite a stay of it.”

“Has anyone seen a stranger about the place?”

“We’re pretty busy today, but I haven’t seen anyone who wasn’t a bona fide guest. It wouldn’t be a registered guest. If the man had a room, why would he lie on rags in the attic?”

“I don’t know—perhaps ...”

“What?”

“The attic windows give a pretty good view. You can see the beginning of the heath. If someone was just entering—well, he could saddle up and overtake him, I suppose.”

“He wouldn’t leave evidence behind that he’d been there.”

“He might if he was in a hurry,”
she suggested. “He could return later and hide the evidence.”

“It wouldn’t take a minute to shove the rags aside and toss the bottles behind a trunk. It wasn’t a regular guest. Someone just taking dinner, perhaps,”
he said pensively.

“Bother, there were half a dozen strange men at dinner. I think I should speak to Officer Clifford.”

“He’s gone back to London. Not for good, but he had some office work to do. He said he’d be returning tomorrow morning. But in any case I don’t think the man was there today. The bread crusts were dry. A pity none of us has been upstairs recently.”

“Your room is right next to the attic staircase. You didn’t hear anything?”

“No, but then I’m practically never in my room. Esther, don’t you think you and your aunt should return to the dower house? I don’t like to think of anything happening to you.”

There was a tinge of more than concern in his voice. Esther looked at him uncertainly. She remembered Joshua’s suggestion that Buck was dangling after her. “We’ll be fine,”
she said, and walked away to the other side of the room.

Buck followed after her. His hand seized her elbow and turned her around. “No point taking chances. You have me here to take care of our inn.”

Our inn. The words struck her oddly. When had her inn become our inn? His hand slid down her arm, grabbing her fingers for a brief squeeze. “Do it, for me,”
he urged.

She pulled her hand away. “Don’t be ridiculous. Now, more than ever, I must be here. I don’t want any calamity to befall when Fletcher is on the verge of an offer.”

“Eh?”
he asked sharply. “Has he offered for you?"

“No, for the inn! He has not offered, but he is serious about buying it.”

“Oh,”
he said sheepishly. “That gave me quite a turn. I will be out of a job when he takes over. At least he didn’t mention keeping me on. I didn’t ask outright. Not sure I’d like to work for him. I mean, it wouldn’t be the same as working for you. I fancy I’d just take off, perhaps go up to London to make my way there.”

Esther mistrusted that calf-like shine in his eyes. “Let’s go up to the attic and have a look around,”
she said in a businesslike voice.

“I already checked it pretty thoroughly. Nothing there but the wine bottles and the pile of rags. Nothing to tell who was using them.”

For the first time since she opened the inn, Esther felt uncomfortable with Buck. She sensed something new in his manner and wondered if he was casting eyes in her direction. It was too ridiculous to consider. She was letting Josh put ideas in her head. She discussed only business during the rest of the meeting, asking him about the names circled in the newspaper.

“I was just doodling. I hoped those noble travelers might put up with us. I was figuring what rooms would suit them. I often do it, not that we get all the names I mark.”

Esther soon left. Going to the attic after dark held no allure whatsoever. She didn’t go till the next morning, bright and early. She paced immediately through the first rooms to the east turret. She had to move a trunk and stand on it to check the view from the window. She could see for over a mile. The main road led past the inn toward the heath. It was an excellent spot for spying out carriages entering that perilous area. Her guest had been Captain Johnnie, not a doubt of it.

She clambered down and began to shove the trunk back against the wall. Wedged against the wainscoting was a cigar stub. She picked it up and rubbed it between her fingers. It was still moist enough that it didn’t crackle. It was fairly fresh, then. She sniffed the air. No scent lingered, but she had no very clear idea how long ago Captain Johnnie had smoked it. Her mind ran over possible known suspects. Joshua didn’t smoke cigars, nor had she ever seen Meecham with one. Fletcher didn’t smoke them. No one she knew did, not even Buck. Not that he—

The hair on her scalp began to lift, causing a strange, prickling sensation. No, it couldn’t be Buck. He was afraid of his own shadow. She could hardly induce him to ride to the heath with her when she had planned her unsuccessful Wrotham trick. Besides, he didn’t smoke cigars. He was always in the office. Of course his apartments were right next to the attic stairs....

She ran downstairs as if the Royal Scamp himself were after her and bolted her bedroom door. Her heart was pounding. She paced the room, running in her mind over anything that might support Buck as a new suspect. Captain Johnnie usually struck in the middle of the night. Buck could have slipped out of the inn. He was a local man and knew all the nearby places where a mount might be hidden. His own mount was a chestnut, which would look black at night. His father’s farm was only a mile away—a safe place to hide his loot, in one of the farm buildings. He needed the money more than anyone else she could think of.

As she thought, smaller details returned to plague her. Lady Gloria said she had stopped by Buck’s office the night the Higginses were attacked, but that he wasn’t in. Buck said he had bolted the door to avoid her visit—but had he? Had he been out attacking the Higginses? She thought of the gold wagon theft, the largest and most heinous of Johnnie’s crimes. That one had occurred at dawn, and no one had any alibi except that he had been in bed asleep. How could Buck expect to spend so much unexplained money?
I’d just take off, perhaps go up to London to make my way there
.

The worst of suspecting Buck was that she couldn’t even discuss it with anyone till Officer Clifford returned. The rest of her acquaintances, Joshua for instance, would either laugh her to scorn, or if they believed her—she thought of Beau—they’d leave her inn. Beau wouldn’t expose Cathy to such danger.

Perhaps she could tell Joshua. She continued pacing and thinking. The survivor from the gold robbery said there had been two men. Who would Buck’s partner be? One large man and one smaller, they said. Buck was tall but slight of frame. He hadn’t any close men friends. Only his cousin, Joshua. A large man. The more she thought, the blacker everything looked, till in the end she half believed Joshua and Buck between them were terrorizing the whole neighborhood.

It was ridiculous. They were both honorable gentlemen. Honorable and greedy, in Joshua’s case. Honorable and very poor in Buck’s. It must gall him, to be sunk to working at the inn. He had been born to better things. If he hadn’t fought with his father ... But he had and was cut off without a sou.

She remembered the newspaper she had taken from Buck’s office a week before. He had circled two items in it—announcements of the two noble carriages that would be passing. So that was why he had done it! And slipped up into the attic to watch from the turret window when the carriages passed. She must tell Officer Clifford about that tomorrow before she left for London. A day away from the troubles of the inn was beginning to look more desirable by the minute. She wouldn’t give up that small sliver of pleasure. Let Bow Street handle Captain Johnnie. She didn’t want to have anything else to do with him.

Officer Clifford was sitting in a far corner of the dining room alone when Esther went downstairs the next morning. “Did you have a pleasant visit in London, Mr. Clifford?”
she asked.

“I had a fruitful visit. I did.”

She looked expectant, but his impassive face told her nothing, and she hastened on with her own business. “I’m off to London myself today with the Fletchers. I must have a word with you before I leave. Wait for me in the office.”

She hurried breakfast and went to the office while Buck was still eating, to ensure privacy with Clifford. He was waiting, as requested, when she popped in. She opened her budget, telling him of the visitor in the attic.

“That don’t look like the work of a guest now, does it?”
he asked. She continued her tale, showing him Buck’s newspaper with the two names circled, and mentioning that Buck had the rooms next to the attic door. With her face flushed pink from embarrassment, she even revealed having seen Joshua Ramsay and Mr. Meecham on the heath and punctiliously repeated their excuse for being there.

“Mr. Ramsay mentioned it to me,”
Clifford told her. “After you was so foolish as to announce in public that the Wrothams would be coming after dark,”
he added snidely.

That was clever of Joshua, she thought, but who was to say he hadn’t still planned to relieve the Wrothams or any other stray travelers of their money? “I think we ought to include all possible suspects,”
she said. “Everyone. Even Joshua Ramsay should not be above suspicion.”

Mr. Clifford looked at her as though she were a Bedlamite. “And the Prince of Wales, too, I daresay.”
Esther ignored this piece of impertinence and hastened her departure.

“So you’re off to London today with the Fletchers, eh? A bit of shopping for the ball, I expect?”

“Precisely.”

“The little lady is recovered, is she?”

“Much better, thank you.”

“I haven’t seen her about.”

“You will. We are leaving at ten.”

“Quite pretty, I hear.”

“Yes, a lovely young blonde.”

He nodded his head sagely and smiled. “Ah.”

At five to ten Fletcher descended to the dining room and Esther hailed him. “I am all ready and waiting, Beau.”
She smiled. Despite some misgivings about leaving the inn for a day, she was more than ready for a break. Captain Johnnie had robbed her of enough pleasure this spring. She would not let him spoil her little jaunt to London as well.