Old Moorhen's Shredded Sporran: The Belchester Chronicles Book 4 Page 13

  Many of the commercial establishments were now antique shops which proved, with the proximity of a river and a beautiful park with a boating lake, a magnet to tourists, especially those from the United States, and the shopkeepers were in price-ticket heaven with the freedom to exaggerate with which this endowed them.

  Lady A was convinced that if the goods had been taken away to be passed through a ‘fence’, then this was the place that would provide the obvious target for placing items. She intended that Beauchamp could drive them over there, and they would investigate the shops in the guise of a couple of bumbling old twits with more money than sense, but who had a sharp idea of what they wanted to buy – i.e. what had been stolen.

  Beauchamp dropped them at the very top of the hill that was the High Street, and reminded them to call him when they were ready to be picked up, and as he drove off, Lady A rubbed her hands again, in gleeful anticipation of what they might find on the shelves of the town’s antique establishments. Hugo was more concerned with not losing his footing – he was still feeling a little unsteady and had brought sticks – and bowling down the hill like a human ball.

  But, before anything else, Lady A insisted that they call at the main entrance to the castle, which was situated at the very top of the hill, and had been built in real fairy-tale style. It would not be too much of a trial to see the Draycott-Bayliss family again.

  She pulled at the old-fashioned iron bell-pull with a sneer, but only because it was bigger than, and seemed to be more ancient, than her own. Within seconds the door was opened by an impeccably attired footman, right down to his white gloves.

  ‘I wonder if we may see Mr and Mrs Draycott-Bayliss. This gentleman’s sister is an old school-friend of Mrs Draycott-Bayliss, and they visited my establishment with their daughter Daisy recently.’

  ‘Poppy,’ hissed Hugo, as the footman’s face creased in pain at this mis-naming of the daughter of the family.

  ‘Poppy, I mean. So many girls are named after flowers these days that it can become really confusing. Do, please, excuse my lapse of memory.’

  The footman asked if she had a calling card and proffered a small silver tray on which she could place it. Fumbling around in her capacious handbag, Lady A did eventually find an old dog-eared card from years gone by, and put it down with a deprecating smile.

  Without another word, the footman turned and walked away towards a door down the hall to the right, that was standing slightly ajar, and through which could be heard the sound of husband and wife laughing over something which had tickled their sense of humour.

  He returned almost immediately, empty-handed, and informed the visitors that Sir and Madam were not at home at the moment, but that he had retained the visiting card for them for when they returned, and firmly closed the door in their faces.

  ‘Blasted cheek!’ exclaimed Lady Amanda, as they walked away from the crenellations and actual portcullis. ‘We could hear very well that they were at home. I bet that cow Tabitha has phoned her up and blackened my name because of the way things happened before she packed up in a huff and left.’

  ‘Well, you were in a rather foul mood all the time she was with us.’

  ‘And no wonder, with those hairy hooligans of hers. She should have taken them straight to a cattery before she arrived at Belchester Towers. They were not suitable to be part of her luggage.’ And that was the end of that. They set off down the hill, both walking very carefully, lest the slope should be their undoing and the bringer of skinned knees and bruised dignities.

  The first shop they arrived at seemed to be filled more with junk than antiques, and did not take long to discount as a possible target for the stolen property. As it was near the top of the hill, though, this was not surprising, as the main bus stop and parking was at the foot of the hill, and a lot of tourists probably never made it this far up the street, before lack of oxygen from the sheer altitude discouraged them from going any further.

  As they descended, so the quality of the goods on offer and the prices ascended, the latter faster than the former. This prolonged the time they spent in each shop as, not only did they have to look out for anything that had come from Belchester Towers, but Lady A found herself enchanted with some of the pieces for sale.

  In the sixth shop, just off the main drag and down a pretty side street, she fell in love with a silver stirrup cup, and before Hugo knew it was happening, she had whipped out her debit card and bought it, asking the proprietor to hang on to it until her man came in to collect it later.

  Two shops later, he had to literally drag her away from what he considered an awfully tacky musical compact that had completely won her heart, at a ridiculously inflated price. ‘Manda, it’s only base metal, the enamelling on the front is really second rate, and he wants two hundred pounds for it. I didn’t think you were the sort of person who would let yourself be so openly rooked.’

  ‘But I love it, Hugo,’ she pleaded.

  ‘Then ask Beauchamp to look for one on the Internet when we get home. This chap charges like a raging bull.’ She’d forget about it as soon as she left the shop, so Hugo had no cause for real concern.

  With this dangled carrot, she reluctantly let herself be led back to the pavement and into the shop next door, so prolific was this type of establishment in this town, that they were often side by side.

  Inside, another crisis arose. ‘Manda, I know it’s pretty, but do you really need an ivory and ebony sewing box. Do you really need it?’

  ‘Want it, Hugo. Want it, she replied sulkily, hugging the objet in question to her chest, as if to demonstrate proprietorial rights.

  ‘But it’s seven hundred and fifty pounds. Isn’t that rather excessive when you’ve just spent a small fortune on a solid silver stirrup cup?’

  ‘No! Want it. My man, could you wrap this for me, please?’ she summoned the shop owner imperiously, while snubbing Hugo’s financial caution at the same time.

  Hugo couldn’t take this without a small fight. ‘You’re only buying these things because you were snubbed at the castle. Isn’t over a thousand pounds a bit steep for being cut by someone you’ve only ever met once, and who’s Tabitha friend and not yours?’

  ‘Shush, Hugo!’ Lady A chided him, for she did not want it to get around that she’d been rebuffed by the town’s castle-keeper. ‘I just fancied a bit of a splurge, that’s all. You know I love pretty things. I may have a surfeit at Belchester Towers, but there’s nothing to say I can’t fancy something new to look at.’ That should settle his hash.

  ‘I think we should call Beauchamp, now,’ suggested Hugo, suddenly aware that he didn’t want to go into any more shops with his friend, lest she spend even more money, and beginning to feel desperate. He knew she had been robbed, but her home was stuffed with fine and valuable objects. She needed more like a desert needed an extra bucket of sand.

  Watching the man lovingly wrap her purchase – no doubt thinking of the huge profit he was making – she nodded almost absent-mindedly, so enchanted was she with her find, and Hugo made the necessary telephone call. ‘And do hurry, old chap. She’s spending.’

  ‘Tell him not to hurry,’ Lady A interrupted. ‘I fancy a cup of tea in one of these delicious teashops with which the town seems so amply supplied.’

  Sighing, Hugo passed on this piece of information, said he’d phone again when they’d done so, and followed her into an establishment where everything in the furniture realm seemed to be drowning in gingham.

  Seating herself at one of these checked horrors of tables, his friend smiled wolfishly and ordered a pot of jasmine tea with a dangerous twinkle in her eye that warned Hugo that something was afoot, and he knew he wasn’t going to like it, whatever it was.

  When Hugo telephoned again, Beauchamp literally ran outside to the Rolls, his face a mask of panic at how much his employer might have spent.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘I’m going to set a trap for him,’ announced Lady Amanda that evening.

  ‘
For whom?’ asked Beauchamp, with impeccable grammar.

  ‘With what?’ asked Enid, simultaneously.

  Hugo merely dozed in his armchair, replete after a much-needed dinner, given that they had only eaten brunch that day.

  ‘For that Jimmy the Jemmy, thief and murderer,’ she replied to Beauchamp. Turning her head towards Enid, she informed her, ‘With my jewellery.’ A further head movement produced, in a louder voice, ‘Hugo! Wake up! I’m laying a trap.’

  ‘Whaa …? Whassup?’ Hugo re-joined them, mentally in a somewhat fuddled state.

  ‘I’m planning to set a trap for that felon using my jewellery, and I shall need your help.’

  ‘Howzat?’

  ‘I want you and I to go for a walk in the grounds talking loudly about how I’ve put all my good jewels in my boudoir as they’re to go off to be cleaned first thing in the morning, and I don’t want to be disturbed too early.

  ‘I also want Beauchamp and you, Enid, to go outside and have a walk around in a different part of the grounds, also having an indiscreet conversation about how worried you are that my gems are to be left out overnight, unguarded, and not locked away as they usually are.’

  ‘Why?’ Hugo had still not caught on to her plans.

  ‘The miscreant is quite evidently hiding out somewhere about the property, as he seems to know everything that goes on. Last night he seemed to know that we were going back to the chapel, and removed all the evidence, and left the body of Evergreen there as a warning to us.’

  ‘Which you’re not going to heed?’

  ‘Absolutely not!’

  ‘Which will put all of us in danger?’

  ‘Four against one, Hugo.’

  ‘What if he’s got a gang?’

  ‘What if he’s got a verruca?

  ‘What if he’s got a gun?’

  ‘Grow a backbone, Hugo!’

  ‘I’ll only go if I can take one of your father’s guns.’

  ‘How very un-English of you.’

  ‘How very sensible of me. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.’

  ‘Very well. But I’m very disappointed in you.’

  ‘It’s better than being very sorry for me, that I’m dead.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘I suggest we all go armed in some way. The man’s killed four times,’ interjected Beauchamp, proving that he was probably the only grown-up present. Enid had gone outside for a cigarette, as usual.

  Lady Amanda and Hugo went outside very soon after this conversation, Lady Amanda with a small pistol in her handbag, Hugo with one in his jacket pocket, both now feeling rather foolish. Hugo had ascertained that they would have to take turns in watching the jewels through the long hours of the night. If he could get this blasted inconvenient bit of baiting over with, he could get to bed sooner and, at least, get some sleep before he had to take his turn on watch.

  ‘I don’t think I’m taking any risk at all,’ brayed Lady A in loud tones as they walked slowly round the lawned area between the house and chapel. ‘After taking all that swag,’ – Hugo blushed at her use of such a corny word – ‘last night, and doing away with Evergreen, I think he’s probably left the area by now.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Hugo, equally loudly, and playing along merely for form’s sake.

  ‘He’ll probably be a couple of counties away by now, if not completely out of the country. Pastures new – that’s what he’ll be after, with the lot he’s copped from here.’

  They continued to maunder on in this ‘am-dram’ way for half an hour, and it proved quite a strain on the imagination. Finally, with relief, they headed back indoors and sent Beauchamp and Enid out to walk around the area to the rear of the house near the stables, to conduct a conversation of similar drivel.

  ‘Do you think that villain is still hanging around?’ asked Enid, remembering to use her most timid voice, as she dragged hungrily on her Benson & Hedges. She found the nicotine in her system made her bold, and she needed to sound vulnerable, in case the murdering thief was listening.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. I reckon he’ll be long gone,’ replied Beauchamp manfully, trying not to cough from the smoke that was blowing round his head. He hoped that Enid was going to give up her filthy habit before they got married. She was a totally different person with this insidious drug in her blood steam.

  ‘I do hope you’re right,’ continued his fiancée, ‘as she’s going to be leaving all that nearly priceless collection of jewellery out of the safe tonight. If she’d only arranged for it to be picked up later in the day, there’d be no need to expose it to danger like that in her boudoir.’

  ‘Quite right, Enid, my dear, but I don’t think there’s any danger of it being stolen almost from under her nose.’

  Thirty minutes and four cigarettes later, they too returned to the house, to find Lady Amanda had gone upstairs to sort through her jewels and make a decision as to which pieces she would use to bait her trap.

  ‘What about the emerald necklace?’ they heard her ask Hugo as they approached the room.

  ‘Much too valuable,’ he declared vehemently. ‘You know how difficult it is to find a decent emerald, and how much they cost. How many are there in that necklace? And they’re all over a carat; some much bigger.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were such a connoisseur of gemstones, Hugo. But I have to use the big pieces. Small-fry wouldn’t be worth his while.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t know that until he’d already broken in and we’d nabbed him.’

  ‘In fact,’ Beauchamp’s voice sounded, as he and Enid entered the room, ‘you don’t really have to leave out any jewellery at all. How would he know the difference?’

  Lady Amanda immediately rummaged around in her bedside table and produced a notepad and pencil. After holding a forefinger up to her lips to silence them she wrote, then displayed the message, ‘He may have bugged the place while we were away. He could be listening to us now’.

  The other three looked surprised at the thought, but no one had the temerity to suggest that she was exaggerating the situation, and nodded solemnly at her, as she put the emeralds back in its locking case.

  ‘I’m only going to leave out the most expensive ones that really need cleaning,’ she said, while extracting some truly awful strings of plastic and glass beads from a bedside cabinet. ‘It’s not worth it having the cheaper stuff cleaned, as I hardly wear it.’

  ‘Just so, your ladyship,’ agreed Beauchamp, with a conspiratorial wink. ‘What absolutely fabulous diamonds there are in that tiara.’

  Suddenly catching on, Enid added, ‘And the sapphires in that necklace and bracelet are out of this world,’ as Lady Amanda added a truly awful plastic brooch of a cat to the pile of useless junk she had produced, to represent the finest of her adornments.

  ‘Thank you all so much for your compliments. I have been well provided for by my forebears. And now we must discuss the insurance claim for what has been stolen recently.’

  On their way downstairs, Beauchamp leant unusually close to his employer and whispered into her ear, ‘A stroke of genius to mention the insurance claim. If he was listening, he’ll think we’ve given up all hope of getting back anything he took.’

  They adjourned to the staff bathroom and turned on all the taps, as they had seen done in films. If someone had bugged the house, this was supposed to prevent them being able to hear any conversation, as the noise of the water would obliterate it.

  ‘It’s my room, so I’ll take first watch,’ volunteered Lady A. ‘We should each do two hours, by my reckoning, to cover the hours when we would all be asleep.

  ‘Huh!’ Hugo felt very disgruntled. ‘If you take first watch, then you don’t have to have your sleep disturbed at all. You just go to bed a little later. Well, I want last watch, so that it just seems that I’ve got up at sparrow-fart.’

  Beauchamp sighed with resignation. ‘OK, Enid and I will take the two middle watches.’

  ‘If we did them together, we could play cards
for four hours,’ said Enid, suddenly seeing a bright side.

  ‘I say, you’re right. We could always catch up our sleep with a nap during the day,’ replied Beauchamp, in total agreement. ‘Right then, that’s settled. What time will you go on guard duty, your ladyship?’

  ‘When we turn out the lights. Shall we say about ten?’

  ‘Hey, that means I have to get up at four o’clock. Have a heart! At least make it eleven,’ pleaded Hugo.

  ‘Fair enough, Huggy-Wuggy.’ Lady Amanda addressed her friend thus out of sheer excitement.

  ‘Manda! Really!’ Hugo admonished her.

  ‘Cocktail time, Beauchamp.’

  ‘As long as you don’t take too many tonight. We don’t want a repetition of last night, now, do we?’ was that manservant’s advice, as he made for the door, Enid on his heels.

  ‘Tell me what I did last night, Hugo. I still don’t know,’

  ‘Hugo obliged, and when Beauchamp returned with his laden tray, she refused one of the already mixed drinks and asked him if he’d be so kind as to rustle her up a Virgin Mary.

  Lady Amanda entered her boudoir a little after eleven o’clock in her dressing gown and slippers, and armed with her library book, a plate of biscuits, a torch, and a flask of cocoa. That lot should keep her going for two hours, no trouble.

  She poured herself a cup of cocoa, put her flask, cup, and plate on a side-table, and lay down on the chaise longue to read. She was about a third of the way through a very fast-paced thriller, and was eager to get on with the plot.

  As she read, she shivered slightly. As an extra incentive to the thief, the sash window had been left open just a tiny bit, advertising that he would not have to work too hard to get at his target.

  Slipping quickly back into her bedroom, she grabbed the eiderdown from the top of the bed, and rushed back to settle down, once more, on the chaise longue. The pile of junk jewellery was still where she had left it, and the human hair affixed with saliva (Enid and Beauchamp’s, respectively, of course) across the door of her safe was still in place. All was well. It was early yet, though.