“But sir, Mr. Flynn posts the schedules and—”
“Damn Flynn,” Eric said with a show of anger, “I’m telling you what you’ll do and what you won’t do. And in the future, here is something else you will not do. You will not work in these rooms alone. You and the other girl — whatever her name is — will work as a pair, is that clear?”
Lily said blankly, “I don’t understand what you’re getting at, sir.”
Eric clasped his hands behind his back and looked her up and down. Then he said, “I’ll tell you exactly what I’m getting at, Miss. There are valuables in this house and I wouldn’t want anyone getting careless. It’s for your own protection, girl...”
After this incident, Lily reported the whole conversation to Mr. Flynn, saying almost in tears, “I won’t be called a thief, Mr. Flynn. I won’t.”
Tony Saxe arrived in the leased convertible shortly after noon and was shown into the library where Eric sat slumped in a deep chair, a glass of sherry in one hand, staring thoughtfully at the view of the orchards and meadows.
On the table beside him was a leather folder, bulky with typewritten correspondence.
“I think the last piece just fell into place, Eric,” Tony Saxe said. A tension and calculation was evident in his expression as he perched on the arm of a sofa. “We must be living right, pal, because this is the pot at the end of the rainbow.
“Last night I got talking to a regular down at Hannibal’s, a rummy with a thirst that won’t quit. After I hosted him to about a barrel of Guinness, I began pumping him about the kid in the stable and the guy who works in the garden. I was looking for some kind of leverage, because it won’t look right if we throw everybody here out on their ass. Somebody’s got to stay, you said that yourself. Otherwise, it’s too damn obvious.
“So the rummy tells me that the gardener, Brown, was the wheel man in a noisy IRA caper a few years back, where they knocked over a lorry hauling some terrorists up to the jail at Longkiln... With this, we can put pressure on Brown, threaten to turn him and his pals in. That way, it’s all smooth as silk. He’s got to play along.”
Eric continued to stare through the windows, sipping sherry, his free hand drumming restlessly on the leather folder.
“So all we got to do...” Tony Saxe looked closely at Eric. “Look, pal. I get the feeling I don’t have your attention. I latched onto the last thing we need and you sit there like a damned buddha drinking booze and watching the scenery. Come on, Eric, get with it!” Saxe snapped his fingers irritably. “Ethelroyd called me last night at the Hannibal. His lorries will be here at eleven-thirty tonight, ready to load.”
“Cool it, Tony,” Eric stood and picked up the leather file from the table. “We’re exactly on schedule and the Constable from Ballytone is on his way here right now. But—” Eric hefted the file in his hands, aware of the tension and excitement building in him. “But I’ve stumbled on something, Tony, that may make this caper with Ethelroyd look like a penny ante poker game.”
“I don’t like surprises, Eric. I don’t like changing the rules in the middle of the game—”
“I’m holding a goldmine in my hands, Tony. Reports and correspondence between Dalworth and one Dr. Julian Homewood. I want you to read it, Tony, every single word of it.”
Eric had found the file when he was going through a Chippendale chest in the late Andrew Dalworth’s bedroom. He had been cataloguing the possessions and effects of the entire manor house, ostensibly to satisfy his interest in artifacts and period furniture, as well as to make his own gratuitous contribution to the estate of Andrew Dalworth. He used the activity to cover his occasional presence in the servants’ quarters.
The correspondence covered a period of eight years, beginning when Jessica was six and continuing until the present. The reports and tests and interviews documented Jessica Mallory’s steadily developing psychic abilities.
Eric had read through all of this material last evening, propped up in his bed with a whiskey beside him. Only curious at first, he became deeply interested and ultimately fascinated by the opportunities suggested in the doctor’s conclusions.
There had been several poems in the folder, written by Jessica and commented on by both Dalworth and Dr. Homewood. In one instance, Dalworth had written, “Julian, doesn’t this strike you as a bit morbid?”
The poem read:
The lines had repelled and frightened Eric, a chilling reminder of Maud’s preoccupation with dissolution, her fear of an unhealthy attraction to mosses and wetness and the mold forming on damp stones. And yet the smug young doctor in Dublin had dismissed Jessica’s poem as the normal, self-drama of a growing girl, a healthy awareness of mortality.
Another of her poems had made Eric uneasy on an even more profound level.
The words had sent a chill through him. It was how he had felt himself on so many occasions, not knowing any answers and worse, not even the questions...
A third poem was accompanied by a sketch of a beach done in blue and green crayon.
As Eric handed the file of letters to Saxe, Flynn the butler appeared in the arched doorway connecting the great hall and library.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Griffith, but Constable Riley is here to see you, sir.”
Eric savored the look of the old servant in his short striped morning vest, white gloves in a pocket (to be worn while serving lunch), but most of all he enjoyed the expression of confusion and concern on Flynn’s composed but worn features.
Eric smiled blandly and said, “Be good enough to show the Constable in. And please ask the rest of the staff, including yourself, to assemble in the kitchen.”
“May I inquire, sir, the purpose of this?”
“You’ll know soon enough, my good man.”
After lunch, Maud Griffith had luxuriated in the ministrations of a hotel masseuse, a large and angular Danish lady whose fingers of steel produced in dizzying succession sensations of nearly insupportable punishment and pleasure. Miss Helgar was a sworn foe of cellulite. Detecting a layer of it under Maud’s slightly rounded abdomen, she had attacked it with a missionary zeal which reduced her client to a state of breathless, flushed exhilaration.
The masseuse promised Maud that if she would undergo a deep massage each day of her stay in London, the chronic back pain she suffered would be banished — Miss Helgar pronounced the word in three distinct syllables — ban-ish-ed — forever. Maud had not talked to anyone so sympathetic in years, so down-to-earth and sensible about the things that Eric had no patience for — her fears and anxieties and dreams. As a consequence, Maud booked four more appointments with Miss Helgar and then, after her shower and a lovely little nap, Maud dressed and returned to her suite in as fresh and cheerful a mood as she could remember for many months.
To her surprise, when she let herself in, she saw that Jessica had packed her suitcase and was dressed for the street, wearing a bottle-green topcoat with a matching beret.
“What’s all this, dear?”