Chapter 24

ii

“I have to say, that didn’t go as well as I’d hoped,” Nigel said, opening the Bentley’s door and climbing into the seat. He crossed his arms as he waited for her.

“What were you expecting?” Sonia asked, preoccupied with changing back into her walking shoes. “How did you think she was going to react?”

“Well, not like that!” he laughed, and reached over, about to slam the door. “The only thing I got from that, was they told her about O’Dowd long before they told us, and Artie’s fucked off to London where we can’t touch him,” he slammed the door as if ending a statement. He didn’t know whose brilliant idea it was not to tell him she’d already been told, but something was already telling him it was either Rose, or Charlie.


“I don’t see why we can’t go after him.” Sonia picked her boots up and looked at the bottoms closely, scraping mud off the soles.

“Go after him?”

“Yes. Go after him. To London,” she added, looking at him and flashing a smile.

“I don’t know,” he exaggerated. “It might have something to do with the fact that we’re in Devon.” She thought he was sounding somewhat sour. “I mean, that would be my first guess,” he added, crossing his arms and settling back down into the seat.

“And what if we named him as our principal suspect?” she asked, placing her boots behind the seat.

“Who? Artie? In what case?”

“The theft of the Strad?” she said, trying not to sound too obvious.

“Based on what?” he said with a laugh. “The fact we saw him jump from a balcony railing to a chandelier and back again, all in one go?” Nigel laughed. “And so we have as a suspect—that is a thief—who can climb the outside of buildings, gaining access to upper floor windows? Who are we supposed to say that too? We have no proof, but he’s a suspect him all the same? That’s hardly the kind of evidence that will put him away.”

“Not to arrest him, no. But it might be enough to get us into London.”

“You expect they’ll send us to London, do you?”

“They will if we say we have a suspect we’re trailing, and the trail leads to London.”

“They’ll tell us to forward all the information we have to the Yard, and let them deal with it. We’ll be left out of it again.”

“What if we say we should be the ones questioning him?” she persisted.

“We’d have to convince them we think he’s in London,” he replied as she started the Bentley and backed out of the drive.

The road out to Bedloe Manor was through countryside washed in colour. The weather was brisk, but she had a blanket they shared and there was a small flask of brandy somewhere. The sun was out and she reached for a pair of sunglasses, put them on and smiled at him as she settled in for the long drive.

“And why do you say we have to convince them?” she asked.

“What excuse could you possibly come up with for not telling them where he is?”

“We don’t know where he is.”

“So why can’t they can pick him up and hold him for us until we arrive?”

“So instead, what if we tell them he gave us the slip?”

“You say them. To whom, exactly, are you referring? Okehampton, or Chumley Grove? Or were you thinking of taking this to Plymouth? I need to know what you’re thinking.”

“I was thinking…we drive out to see the Baron, explain it to him, and get him to put in a good word for us. He has a telephone. We let him call and request that we be sent off in hot pursuit.”

“And you think the Baron will help us?” He sounded skeptical.

“Ultimately, it’s his violin, isn’t it? We won’t mention O’Dowd’s murder. He doesn’t need to know about that. We play up the violin. Wouldn’t it be in his best interest to make certain we follow the only lead we have?”

“And you want to talk to the Baron about it?”

“He wants his Strad back,” she pointed out.

“And when we don’t deliver? Because we don’t have a clue as to where he really is, remember? It’s all over the moment someone calls our bluff.”

“Then we won’t let that happen, will we?”

Sonia changed the subject.

“Tell me…did you believe her?”

“Who? Claire? Why? You don’t think she was trying to hide something, do you?”

“I do, but I don’t know what.”

“I’m not saying I believed her!” Nigel laughed.

“But?”

“Exactly. ‘But,’ ” he said, levelling a gaze at her.

He looked at the mud on the bottoms of his shoes and hoped he didn’t track huge clods of mud into the Bentley. He’d scrape it off once it was dry, he told himself, but in the meantime it gave him something to think about. They were making huge advances in science these days, and he wondered if that was the way the investigation should go.

“Do you know anything about mud?” he asked, still looking down at his shoes.

“Mud?”

“Yes. There was mud inside Bedloe Manor. The room he used climbing in. I assumed it was from the garden outside. It was on the wall, as well as the sill. But the mud on the sill was a lighter colour.”

“So?”

“If there’s a way we can determine if the mud on the house is the same as the mud outside the window, we may be able to determine where it came from?” he asked.

She looked down at his shoes.

“And wiping your muddy shoes on my floor inspired you? Not something like, ‘Oh sorry Sonia, I didn’t mean to get mud on your floor, but…’ That’s what you should be saying, instead whatever you thought you said.”

“A strange way of saying it, but it almost goes without saying—”

“No. It doesn’t. Try again.”

“I’m sorry Sonia, but I’ve tracked some mud into the Bentley.”

“Oh, that’s alright,” she laughed. “I’ll sweep it up when it dries.”

“You’d do that to me in the middle of a serious conversation?”

She nodded. “I thought it might be funny,” she said, turning to look at him and forcing him to laugh. Waiting him out as she smiled at him.

“Im sorry,” she said, bouncing on her seat as she turned to face the road. “I’m listening, now tell me where you going with it.”

“What if it’s mud from O’Dowd’s? Knowing what kind of mud it is, might prove he was there.”

“I’m not saying it’s not possible,” she reasoned. “I want to believe it is. I think science as a whole has made great leaps. But a splatter of mud at the scene of a crime is hardly compelling as far as evidence goes.”

“It doesn’t have to be compelling. All you have to do is show it’s possible. It might be coincidental, but coincidentally, it points a finger in the right direction. That was wit, by the way.”

“And very subtle it was. But when we started this, I was the one trying to convince you we needed to go to London. Now, you’re telling me we can get him with a scraping of mud. Who are you going to present this to?”

“Certainly not Charlie! Or Rose!” It was his turn to laugh, and she smiled.

“So we go see the Baron?”

“Why on earth I’m I listening to this?”

“Because he might get us on the train to London,” she said after a moment’s thought. “If we tell it to him straight and clear.”

“It don’t think that’s the way to go about it,” he smiled, shaking his head.

“Didn’t he and Artie’s father attend the same school together somewhere?” she asked a moment later.

“What? Do you think there’s loyalty there?”

“That depends on how well Artie presented himself, doesn’t it?”

“Artie means nothing to him.”

“They have a habit of taking care of their own,” she pointed out.

“That they do,” he agreed. “Of course, Artie could be lying. He does seem to have a propensity for it, don’t you think? He lied about the horse, remember?”

“What about Roger Ashcroft?”

“What about him?”

“How do you think he fits into the whole thing? As the cuckolded husbanded?”

“Probably just a smokescreen—”

“A smokescreen? I’ll bet you he’s more than just a little anxious to know who the fuck beat him like that,” she was quick to say.

“What? Are you thinking he’ll pay for your trip to London?”

“No, but maybe he can help us convince the Baron? And if not him, maybe the Baron’s daughter…? And maybe—just maybe, mind you—the Baron will be more inclined to help convince whoever he speaks to, that we should be sent us off to London? And all the while, betrayed by his own daughter’s.”

“Why would you think it’s her?”

“She stays home and everyone else goes out to the Fair. A coincidence? Maybe, but that ‘maybe,’ will haunt us if we don’t take look into it while we can.”

“You think she’s behind it? Her own parent’s house? Why?”

“Money, of course. She might as well have just told me when she said her husband wasn’t one of the nouveau riche.”

“You read too many detective stories,” she said.

“Maybe they hired him and he double-crossed them? Goes after Ashcroft and beats the fuck out of him so he doesn’t talk.”

“And who double-crossed who, or did she do it?” she asked.

“It would be easier to believe it was her.”

“Would it?” she asked, looking up at him.

“She’s a very pretty girl. I get the feeling she’s been straying off the Beaten Path. And if it’s not her, it’s him.”

“For God’s sake, Nigel! How could you possibly come to a conclusion like that? You’ve castigated the two of them without even knowing anything about them. How could you possibly not think that now—after that brief demonstration of what you really feel—anything you say isn’t going to effect the way I think of you?”

“And what would that be?”

“That you’re a complete and utter dolt.”

He looked out of the side window at the Devonshire countryside, admiring the wide open fields of lush greenery disappearing into distant tawny shades of faded yellow. Verdant tracks of rolling hills spread out over a low laying landscape that kissed the sky in the distance where dark clouds loomed over the horizon. The sun was breaking through the edge of the clouds and illuminated patches of land separated by hedgerows and trees, fading to blue in the distance. He could see a bird soaring over the fields—a raptor of some sort, he told himself—watching it float on invisible thermals with an effortless flap of it wings, turning in one direction and then the other the higher it soared, until he lost sight of it. The landscape slipped by in endless acres of farmland, the occasional farmstead scarring the land with sod fields turned down like a blanket on a bed, sheep freckling the landscape, as farmers worked the fields.

It would make a nice painting, he thought.