“Milord, I am happy to see you did not take a chill. An unfortunate accident. One must be wary on the shingle beach. It is slippery when wet.”
“No harm done, except to my jacket—and my pride,” Fairfield said, with a forgiving grin in my direction.
“I thought Lord Fairfield might want to begin making his selection of birds,” I said, glancing around. “He is particularly interested in Caesar and Cleo’s birds. Ah, I see Caesar is back.” Cleo fluttered around the branch excitedly.
He sat in his tree, staring down at his inferiors. Caesar is a large bird. His cere is black, which gives him a scowling look. His color is undistinguished, a pearly gray with a purplish breast and some black on his wings. What sets him apart in looks is a distinguishing set of neck feathers. They curve forward, forming a sort of snood behind his head.
“Caesar is back!” Fairfield exclaimed. I had an impression, just from the corner of my eye, that Snoad gave him an admonishing look. Fairfield examined Caesar. “Good lord! What an odd-looking fellow he is. He seems a bit perturbed about something.” He was indeed spreading his wings and squawking, but not moving from his perch at all.
“He is mostly rock pigeon, but partly jacobin,” Snoad explained. “It is the latter that accounts for his hood. And the lady beside him is the missus, Cleo.” She preened her white feathers, then pecked angrily at her beloved. I saw that pigeons, while monogamous, were not necessarily always in harmony. “The splash of burgundy on her chest is unique in our birds,” Snoad mentioned.
Fairfield went forward to admire them, but Snoad said that as they seemed upset, he would show our guest Sextus and Aurelia instead. “This is the pair you are interested in,” he said, and added in an accusing way, “If Miss Hume plans to sell them, that is. I am trying to convince her to keep them. Their training has just begun. It might already be too late to move them.”
I rushed in to execute Depew’s orders. “I am somewhat concerned about the training, Snoad. I have not seen you taking the birds from the nest to have them fly home.”
“That is why I asked for an assistant. I plan to go afield this afternoon. I am a little concerned that the lad you sent is old enough to make sure they are all back, and to time their return.”
“Cassidy is fourteen. He knows how to count and tell the time. Where will you take them?”
“I had planned to drive north of Atherton.”
“Perhaps Lord Fairfield would like to accompany you,” I suggested.
Snoad looked quite astonished at my suggestion. “If you are sure you wish to part with him,” he said, in a brash tone that a servant has no right to use with his employer.
“I have several letters to write to friends, thanking them for their condolences over my father’s death.”
“It sounds a dandy outing,” Fairfield said at once. “But why don’t we drive to Dover? Along the sea would be a more interesting drive, and I have relatives there. I haven’t been to Dover in a dog’s age.”
“The birds have been to Dover many times. They have to fly from all directions,” Snoad replied.
“Of course,” Fairfield said, though I believe even this basic fact of training was unknown to him. “What time shall we leave?”
“No time like the present,” Snoad replied.
“Shall we take my rig? Sixteen miles an hour,” Fairfield tempted.
Snoad’s lips stretched in appreciation. “If you don’t mind having it encumbered with pigeon cages,” he replied.
Bunny and I made a hasty exit. I hoped the gathering and caging of the pigeons would take long enough for Bunny to gallop to the inn and notify Depew of their destination.
“Did you notice his trick?” Bunny asked, with an air of excitement.
“What do you mean?”
“He had Caesar taped to his perch.”
“Taped? What do you mean?”
“His claws were taped onto the branch.”
“How very odd! Why would he do that?”
“Beats me.”
“It cannot have anything to do with spying. I wish I knew more about the birds, but no doubt there is some reason for it. Cleo was not taped down.”
Bunny posted off at once, and I took up a position in the saloon that gave me a view of the others’ departure. When Snoad and Fairfield passed the window, their friendly manner told me that they were working together. There was not a single whiff of the servant in Snoad’s demeanor. In fact, it was Snoad who held the ribbons, and he handled the frisky grays very well, too.
I had very little hope of finding the code book, but I would look. To be rid of Cassidy while I did so, I told him the wood was getting low in the kitchen, and I would guard the loft till he returned. There were so many places to look that I despaired of finding it. There were all the cages, to begin with. Searching them was extremely unpleasant. Many of the birds were incubating eggs, and put up a great flurry when I intruded. The place was full of feathers by the time I finished, and, of course, there was no sign of the book.
I looked every place, all along the ledges of the roof, in Papa’s account book, and in all the nooks and crannies. By the time Cassidy returned, the loft was ringing with the throaty sound of disturbed birds. I noticed that Caesar was no longer in the tree, and asked Cassidy about the taping.
“That was to keep him from Cleo while you was here, miss,” he said, with a bold grin. I swallowed a grin at Snoad’s idea of my prudishness, and thought no more of it.
“But what ails the birds, miss? What have you done?” Cassidy demanded. The squawking was quite noticeable.
“Nothing. A hawk has been flying past the screen and frightened them. You’d best sweep up these feathers.”
I ran down one flight of stairs to Snoad’s rooms. They were locked as before, which gave me hope that the book might be within. I got the key ring from my father’s desk, and after several tries, found one big brass key that fit the lock. I entered, my insides quaking, and gazed around at a room that had been rigged out as a study.
I remembered the desk from a little-used bedroom. Other furnishings had been brought up, too. There was a fine blue berg
è
re chair from another suite, bookcases, good lamps, a carpet, all the fixings of a polite chamber. Pretty good treatment for a servant! I spotted his bottle of brandy sequestered under the desk. I immediately rushed to the desk. It was not locked, which surprised me.
It held various accounts having to do with the feed and management of the pigeons. There wasn’t a single private letter there. As I thought about that, it seemed odd. Snoad did occasionally receive letters, usually from Branksome Hall. His replies had also been seen from time to time on the salver in the hall downstairs, awaiting the post. He had no personal mementos, no pictures of mother or family framed on the desk, no bibelots in memory of a trip here or there.
One would think, from the looks of the room, that he had landed on earth the day he came to Gracefield. The lack of any personal items suggested concealment. Did all his personal memorabilia have a French accent, perhaps? I examined the books in the bookcase next. It was a big job, as I had to remove them one by one and look behind them, and also shake them in hope of finding notes concealed between their leaves.
I took note of the titles while I searched. There was a good sprinkling of novels and poetry, some of them from my father’s library, but none of them in French. Others were books of geography or history. I read the flyleafs. Not one of them had his name inscribed, but several of them had had the blank page in front cut out with a razor.
I went into the next room, and observed with a jab of anger that it, too, held many items from guest rooms belowstairs. Why had my father given a servant such good furnishings? What I did
not
see was any sign of the scientific work that was the excuse for Snoad’s second room. “A place for Snoad to do his scientific work,” I remembered my father saying. I noticed that Snoad had had our journals brought upstairs for his perusal when we were finished with them. There were plenty of journals scattered about, giving the room a messy look.
I searched the room quickly. On the bedside table was the book of Byron’s poetry he had been reading in the loft. A patent pen sat beside the book. I leafed through the volume and found the sheet with the poem. Another poem had been written on the bottom of the same page. It read:
As moon to sky
As water to sea
As blossom to meadow
Is my love to me.
As heather to hills
As dew to the morn
For now and for always
He had scratched out two or three last lines, apparently finding it difficult to rhyme “morn.” There was a “torn” and a “born” in there, neither making much sense. What struck my eye, after a second reading, was that he had used the word “heather.” Was that coincidence, or had he been thinking of me? I read the verse again, and felt a twinge of pity for Snoad. Had the poor fool gone falling in love with me? I supposed that even a spy was not immune to Cupid’s shafts. Even a French spy. It softened my animosity to Snoad, but the facts were still there. He was the enemy. Even now he might be meeting his cohorts, planning the destruction of England.
I reread the first poem, disliking those “gray” eyes, when mine were green. Did he dash off a bit of doggerel to every lady he met? I finished searching the room, tidied everything up so he would not know I had been in, and left, locking the door behind me.
Then I went below to await Bunny’s return. He came shortly after. “I told Depew. Offered to go with him, but he says to stay here and look for the book.”
“I am certain Snoad has the book, and carries it on him. I searched the loft and his room.”
“Seems to me Depew might need a hand, if Snoad is meeting his men.”
“What did he say?”
“Said he’d handle it. Told me to come back here.”
“I wish we had a more clever superior, Bunny. I am not at all sure Depew is smart enough to catch Snoad.”
“He’s been put in charge. He mustn’t be as stupid as he seems. I mean to say, why was Snoad searching the house t’other night if he’s found the book? It is Fairfield who is the raw one. A very shallow fellow. The deeper you dig with him, the shallower he gets. You ought to have heard him squawk about his ruined jacket when you dunked him.”
“Let us look some more. We could try the cellar. Papa kept a close watch on his wine. He was usually downstairs twice a week.”
That is how we wasted a fine afternoon, by searching the dank, cold cellar. Auntie demanded to know what we were about, and Bunny said we were taking an inventory of the bottles, to see if we should order more wine.
“You know Papa liked to keep well stocked,” I added.
Auntie shook her head at this lunacy, but left us alone. Of course, we found nothing except dirt and cobwebs and black beetles. This undertaking made a bath necessary before dinner. I heard Fairfield and Snoad passing in the hall while I was in the tub. “It must have been an accident, Kerwood,” I heard Fairfield say, in a loud voice.
“Accident be damned. We were followed,” Snoad replied angrily. “Do you remember, Heather asked where we were going?”
“No,
did she?”
So Snoad called me Heather behind my back, did he? And Fairfield, I feared, was every bit as stupid as I thought. He had not remembered that I asked their destination.
I was most eager to talk to Depew, and learn what “accident” had transpired on that trip to Atherton. Whatever it was, the spies had returned unharmed, and worse, alerted that they were under observation. I felt things could not go on much longer in this semi-peaceful vein. They were drawing to a crisis. I remembered, too, that Snoad had Papa’s pistol. Then I had to put on a smile and go down and join Fairfield for dinner, as though he were not a spy, here to trick us.
Chapter Fourteen
I was, of course, extremely curious to learn what “accident” had befallen Snoad and Fairfield during their trip. What first occurred to me was that Depew had rigged the curricle to break down, but a second thought showed me the ineligibility of that course. Depew wanted to see where they were going, and whom they were meeting. Besides, he didn’t know what carriage they would be taking. I decided it was a genuine accident, which Snoad’s guilty conscience turned into a plot. Spies would always have to be suspicious of everyone.
As Fairfield seemed fairly dim-witted, I hoped to find out from him that evening what sort of accident it was. As things turned out, the opportunity did not arise. He claimed a sick headache after dinner and remained in his room. I did have letters to write, and when Auntie suggested piquet, I was quick to remind her of them, and let Bunny be her partner. While we were setting up the table, I told him that I was going up to the loft. If I was not down in half an hour, he must come after me.
Depew wanted me to keep an eye on the loft, and I wanted to try if I could discover from Snoad what had happened that afternoon. With these frail excuses, I abandoned my partner to piquet and went upstairs. The loft was cool and quiet. A gentle cooing from the nests was the only sound. As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I espied a form at the far end, near Caesar’s tree. There was something menacing in it, hovering silently in the corner. It moved against the screen, and suddenly assumed the form of a man. Snoad.
My racing heart resumed its normal pace as he detached himself from the tree and advanced toward me. He was dressed in black, but not evening clothes. Instead of a jacket, he wore a thick knitted jersey against the wind.
“Good evening, Miss Hume,” he said, bowing. “Are my services required at the whist table this evening?” His rich voice was edged in sarcasm.
To avoid a skirmish, I decided to conciliate him. “Not this evening, Snoad, but my aunt was favorably impressed with your skill. She liked you.”
“I am, of course, vastly interested in your
aunt’s
opinion,” he replied flirtatiously.
I had not come to flirt. “Lord Fairfield is not feeling quite the thing this evening,” I said. “Perhaps the outing was too much for him.”
“I am sorry to hear it.”
The man was an oyster. I could not ask outright if there had been an accident, or he would know I had been eavesdropping. “Mr. Smythe described him as a Corinthian. I had not thought one of those athletic gentlemen would be overcome by a drive to Atherton,” I said leadingly.