High Rhymes and Misdemeanors Read online

“I have not loved the world, nor the world me,” quoted Sweet. “Do you know the quotation?”

  “Isn’t it from ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’?” Grace questioned. She stayed at the window, peering out. The woods stood still and silent.

  “Hey? Hmm.” Sweet glowered. “You’re too young to know how true those words are. Truer words were never written.” He seemed to be feeling sorry for himself, for he added, “You see before you a philosopher, an idealist, a man of letters. A man who wished only to devote himself to the pursuit of intellectual studies. But fate was otherwise inclined. I had to bow to duty, to the needs of my family. And what thanks have I received?”

  She wondered if Ferdy had tackled him about spending a hundred thousand pounds on first editions.

  He sat before his bedroom fire in a sumptuous claret brocade dressing gown. He was drinking something out of a pewter mug. Grace was fairly sure it was not tea. “Sit down, sit down!” he commanded.

  She sat down and tried to compose herself.

  “Now,” Aeneas Sweet said, “Seeing that this partner of yours is out of the way, suppose you and I try to come to an agreement?”

  Her voice shot up despite her effort to stay calm, cool and collected as the commercials advised.

  “He’s not out of the way. He’ll be right back! And we told you last night we don’t have it! We don’t even know what it is!”

  Sweet said coldly, “Lower your voice. Do you suppose I want that imbecile to know what we’re discussing?”

  “That imbecile is the least of your worries. There’s a sinister motorcycle parked in your woods. Not to mention that Mutt and Jeff followed us down here. They’re probably the ones who attacked us last night—unless that was you again. And they may have Peter.”

  “Mutt and Jeff?” The old man gaped at her. “Are you mad?”

  “I think I’m the only one of all of you who isn’t.” Even if she was flinging terms like ‘sinister motorcycle’ around. Nervously, she rose again and returned to her vantage point at the window. “I don’t know why I’m wasting time. I should have followed my instinct in the very beginning. I should have gone to the police. Now they have Peter.”

  “The police?” gasped Sweet. “The police have Peter Fox?”

  “Mutt and Jeff.” Impatiently she clarified, “We call them Mutt and Jeff. We don’t know their real names. Anyway, we’ve wasted enough time sitting around talking!” She remembered that in books and movies threatening the police usually ended in the threatener getting knocked off. She sealed her lips on the rest of what she had been about to say.

  “Silence! I will not be subjected to the viraginous tantrums of a woman!” Sweet blustered, “Young people have no gratitude. I invite you to my home, share my hospitality with you and that scoundrel, and this is the thanks I get? Fairy tales? Cartoon characters? Well, young woman, I daresay you see now what comes of playing one side against the other. I suggest you reconsider your position before it’s too late.”

  He began bellowing for Ram Singh.

  Grace left him to it, racing upstairs and then lugging her bags and Peter’s back down to the Land Rover. She knew she should stop and reconnoiter, but she was afraid to spare the time. Every moment might mean life or death to Peter.

  But when she reached the courtyard, it occurred to her that Peter had the keys. Standing there sweating in the chill morning air she tried to think what to do next.

  Peter probably knew how to hot-wire a car. He knew so many useful things. The young ladies of St. Anne’s also probably knew how to hot-wire a car, but what was the point of hot-wiring a car you couldn’t get into?

  Grace had not realized how much she had come to depend on Peter until now. She was a little aggravated at how lost—how bereft she felt without him.

  She needed a plan. At the very least, she needed to take a couple of deep breaths. Then again, her course was clear. She must go to the police. If Mutt and Jeff had nabbed Peter, the rules of the game were irrevocably changed. This was not something she could manage on her own. So her plan was to go to the police.

  But without keys she couldn’t drive to the police.

  And it didn’t seem prudent to call from the Hall. Assuming they had a phone. She hadn’t seen one during their stay. Perhaps Sweet kept it under lock and key lest his nephew run up long-distance bills.

  She didn’t have a cell phone.

  That left walking.

  Grace scanned the silent woods, the blood-red leaves startling against the fog.

  In the distance she heard the bad-tempered snarl of a bike engine. But that could be any bike. It didn’t mean…

  She had the most ridiculous and unproductive desire to burst into tears. That would really be the last straw.

  Then, as though in a dream, Peter walked out of the woods.

  Grace ran to meet him. A few feet away she stopped, aware she had been about to throw herself into his arms—and that his arms were not anticipating her arrival.

  “Where have you been?”

  Despite the black eye and supercilious expression, no one had ever looked more beautiful to her.

  “I told you I was going after him.”

  “No, you didn’t! You said you’d be right behind me!”

  “And I am.” He eyed their luggage. “Are we going somewhere?”

  “I was going to the police.”

  “The police?” Peter was aghast. “Why on earth?”

  “I thought you’d been—I thought something happened to you. What did happen to you?”

  “Nothing happened. I circled round to try and ambush them but they scarpered.” He unlocked the Land Rover. “Probably has nothing to do with us. Just another trespasser.”

  “There was a bike in the woods the day the police found Danny Delon in the tarn. I think he was watching them.”

  “The same bike?”

  “Uh, how would I know that?”

  Peter lifted a dismissing shoulder.

  “Now what?” Grace was afraid to let him out of her sight. Her partner in crime.

  “Now,” Peter said with quiet satisfaction, “we lay a little trap.”

  “A trap? What kind of trap?”

  “Ideally, one that works.”

  She was so happy to have him back she didn’t even object, getting into the car and sinking into contemplation.

  They drove through several miles of lonely cows in lonely pastures before Peter inquired, “What’s up thou still unravished bride of quietness?”

  “Hmm?” she hedged. “I’m hungry.”

  “Get away. What else?”

  Grace raked a hand through her hair. “Have you noticed that no one has actually said the word ‘manuscript’?”

  “So?”

  “Everyone keeps referring to it as ‘it.’ Or ‘the item.’ Like it’s an inanimate object.”

  “A manuscript would be an inanimate object.”

  “But they’re not! Not in the same way.” Eagerly, Grace turned to face him. “It’s hard to explain, but if we were hunting for a manuscript, or even a letter, I don’t think any of these people could help discussing it. Discussing the implications of it.”

  “Possibly.” He shifted gears and they sped around a slow-moving lorry.

  “For example, if it were a letter proving that Byron and Augusta Leigh were actually lovers, I think—scholars being what they are—”

  “They would have to talk about it,” Peter concluded thoughtfully. “That’s rather shrewd reasoning, Professor.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Grace said. “These are wealthy people. Lady Venetia is, anyway. I can’t imagine jewels being of such interest to her that she’d be willing to risk her professional reputation— such as it is—let alone break the law.”

  Peter’s eyes briefly left the road. “You don’t understand the mania of the fanatic collector. These people will pay anything—and I do mean anything—for the object of their desire.”

  “But that’s just it!” Grace exclaimed. “These pe
ople are mad about Byron, not jewels per se. I could see them doing anything to get hold of an original manuscript or something personal to Byron, but jewels? Byron was a man. What kind of jewels would he have? A signet ring? A pocket watch?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes! What previously unknown jewels would he have possessed that would be of interest to a collector?”

  “The fact remains,” Peter reminded her, “that we are looking for something relating to Byron, something someone is willing to kill for. Gewgaws.”

  “Something probably worth more than a hundred thousand pounds,” Grace agreed. She looked more closely at the rearview mirror.

  “Peter…”

  “I see them.”

  Like a persistent cloud on the horizon, the silver Rolls drifted behind them at a discreet distance as they tooled along.

  They stopped for an early lunch at a pub, Peter parking a little out of the way in a field beside the road.

  “Wouldn’t it be wiser to park behind the building?” Grace suggested tactfully.

  “They might miss us.”

  They walked across the little pasture and into the whitewashed stone building. The pub seemed to be crowded with fishermen. It was nice to see that these jewel-like lakes and streams were not going to waste, although the guidebook had noted—curiously—that the water here was so pure that apparently only fish from the ice age survived in those cold depths.

  They sat down in a high-backed booth with a tartan tablecloth. Peter brought them each a pint from the taproom.

  “I’d kill for a chef salad,” Grace muttered. “I don’t know if my cholesterol level will ever be the same.”

  “What was it like before?”

  “I don’t know. I’m betting lower though.”

  Chef salad was not on the menu, and Grace had to be satisfied with lamb chops, just-picked potatoes and asparagus. Wonderful food, food from a different time, a different state of mind. And to think that back home people always referred to British cuisine as blah.

  When their food was set before them, Peter said, “Enjoy your lunch. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  Grace put her fork down. “Wait a minute! Now what? Where are you going?”

  “So many questions, so little time.”

  She stared up at him. The black slash of eyebrows and the wide ironic mouth made his face a caricature. It was not really a face to inspire trust, and yet she did trust him.

  “I’m the bait?”

  “More of a distraction.”

  “Okay, I can do that. I can distract.”

  “You can indeed. Wait five minutes after they come inside, then go out through the back.”

  “The back? What if there isn’t a back?”

  He gave her a chiding look.

  “Why do I feel like I wandered into an episode of La Femme Nikita?”

  He ignored this. He didn’t own a TV so perhaps he didn’t understand her. “Five from when they sit down.”

  And then he was gone. After an emotion-fraught second or two, Grace pulled out her copy of Glenarvon. Determinedly, she affixed her eyes to the page. The book was dry but lunch was delicious.

  Grace savored her lamb chops glazed in rosemary and quince. Her eyes on Glenarvon, she read,

  Oh I am changed, she continually thought; I have repressed and conquered every warm and eager feeling; I love and admire nothing; yet am I not heartless and cold enough for the world in which I live. What is it that makes me miserable? There is a fire burns within my soul…

  The cruel antihero of the tale was naturally based upon Byron, who had quickly tired of the author and her obvious attempts to snare him. Supposedly Byron had found the novel amusing, writing that the character of Glenarvon was a “poor likeness” since he had not sat still long enough for Lamb to draw a real portrait of him. Though the affair had lasted a scant four months, Lady Caro had spent the next four years chasing Byron.

  Perhaps if Byron had found the right woman, Grace thought. Quality not quantity. Of course, a happily married family man Byron would have spoiled the mystique.

  Caught up in her thoughts, Grace only then noticed that Mutt and Jeff had entered the pub and were conspicuously trying to look nonconspicuous in a booth facing her.

  Grace looked down into the book once more. She was afraid her expression was giving her away. She felt nakedly self-conscious.

  She sipped her pint. It was impossible to concentrate. She had forgotten to look at her watch and she was afraid to look now. Of course, she could count slowly to sixty about five times. She worried about it for a few minutes—hopefully five—then reluctantly taking a final bite of her broiled chops, Grace slipped her purse strap over her shoulder and slid out of the booth.

  Mutt and Jeff began to whisper.

  She could feel eyes boring into her back as she walked slowly to the ladies’ room. She tried to look like a woman who had nothing more important on her mind than powdering her nose.

  Inside, she was relieved to find that there really was a window and that—as in so many British establishments—there was no screen on the window. She inched it open, dropped her purse out and climbed through. She jumped down to the ground.

  Tiptoeing to the end of the building, she peeked around the corner.

  The Rolls sat unattended in front of the pub.

  Now what? She saw neither Peter nor the Land Rover.

  Just as she was ordering herself not to get excited, Mutt’s long face poked out the ladies’ room window.

  “Oy!” he called. He withdrew his head.

  Tires shelling gravel, the Land Rover pulled up beside her. Peter leaned across to open the door.

  Grace hopped in. “They’re coming!”

  “That’s the idea.” He floored the accelerator and they sped onto the narrow highway as Mutt and Jeff ran out of the pub.

  “That’s timing it a little too close. What did you do to their car?”

  “Nothing subtle. Grabbed a handful of wiring.” He handed her a map. “See if you can find a shortcut through these woods.”

  “Where are we heading?”

  “Back to Penwith Hall.”