‘He did say he’d get even with her,’ my stepson pointed out. ‘And I don’t think he would have gone away then if Hercules hadn’t started barking at him and trying to bite his ankles. It made Celia laugh and that made the doctor even crosser.’
The housekeeper had entered the hall in time to overhear Nicholas’s last remark and she smiled sourly. ‘Oh, Celia enjoys humiliating the poor man,’ she said, starting to pour the wine which we had so far neglected. She pushed full beakers towards us. ‘You’d think,’ she went on angrily, ‘that a woman of her age would be grateful for a handsome man like that to come courting her. Plump in the pocket, too. Celia will soon be thirty-six. High time she was in an establishment of her own.’
‘Be quiet!’ Clemency ordered her furiously. ‘I don’t want to hear any more of such talk. Celia’s happy here with us, and that’s how we want it to remain. You’d better not say those things in front of Oswald. It would be as much as your place is worth.’
Arbella Rokeswood flushed painfully and her mouth shut like a trap. If looks could have killed, Clemency would have been a dead woman. And so would Sybilla, who was nodding vehemently in agreement.
‘I’m not sure I shan’t tell him,’ the latter told the housekeeper spitefully.
I slapped my open hand on the table making them all jump and spilling some of the wine.
‘These squabbles will get us nowhere,’ I reproached them. I turned again to Nicholas and Elizabeth. ‘After Dr Jeavons left, what happened next?’
‘We went on playing hide-and-seek,’ my daughter said. ‘It was Celia’s turn to seek, so Adam and Nick and I ran off to hide. Nick and I went together because we’d found a little stone hut at the end of a long, twisty path — I don’t know where Adam and Hercules went — and we waited and waited, but Celia never came. In the end, we thought she’d just got tired of playing and gone back indoors, so we came out and started a game of our own. Then, after a bit, we found Adam and Hercules. Adam had taken his shoes and hose off and was paddling in a stream at the end of the garden. Hercules was splashing about as well. They were both in a terrible state,’ Elizabeth added virtuously, wrinkling her nose.
I gave Adam an admonitory glance, which he returned with a wide-eyed, innocent stare.
‘And then?’ I prompted.
‘And then it was dinnertime,’ Adela said. ‘I went out to call the children in, but there was no sign of Celia. And when I asked where she was, Nick and Bess said she’d gone back to the house, but she hadn’t. Clemency, Sybilla and I searched everywhere, but there was no sign of her. Sybilla and Clemency then went outside to search the garden — I had to clean up Adam and Hercules — but again, they could find no trace of her.’
‘I tell you, you’re making a fuss about nothing,’ Arbella put in irritably. ‘Celia’s gone for a walk to clear her headache. She’ll be home presently, you mark my words.’
‘She didn’t come home for dinner.’ Sybilla began to cry. ‘It’s hours now since anyone’s seen her. She wouldn’t stay out walking all this time. Something’s happened.’ Her voice rose shrilly. ‘Someone’s killed her. Whoever it is who’s trying to harm us. I think we ought to send for Oswald. He’ll know what’s to be done.’
Clemency put an arm around her sister’s shoulders. ‘Hush, my dear. Let’s not jump to conclusions. As Arbella says, there may be a perfectly satisfactory explanation.’ But her voice quavered and I could hear the panic behind the sensible advice.
‘I’m presuming Dr Jeavons got into the garden without returning to the house,’ I said. ‘Am I right? Is there a separate entrance to the garden?’
Clemency nodded. ‘There’s a side gate that leads through from the little copse.’
‘The copse?’
‘A thick stand of trees that grows some way back from the main track,’ Adela explained. ‘It’s not a part of the Arbour land. It just happens to be on the other side of the gate.’
‘And has the copse been searched?’
Clemency and Sybilla looked guiltily at one another. ‘We. . we didn’t think. .’
‘Stay here,’ I commanded. ‘I’ll go and look. Just tell me how to find this gate.’
‘We’ll show you,’ my daughter volunteered, catching hold of Nicholas’s hand.
‘You’d better let them, Roger,’ my wife advised. ‘You’ve only seen the garden from the windows. It’s more of a labyrinth than you imagine.’
She was not exaggerating. Nothing had apparently been done to it in the quarter of a century that the Godsloves had lived there. It had simply been allowed to return to its natural state. Here and there could still be discerned the remnants of a formal layout: a rose garden, a shrubbery, a sunken herb garden, the stone hut at the end of an overgrown path which had probably once served as repository for picks and spades. But now the roses ran riot, the once exotic blooms reverting to the single, pallid dog-rose of the hedgerow, the shrubbery a mass of stunted, scrubby plants that impeded progress and tore at one’s hose, but which provided wonderful cover for secret games and hide-and-seek. There was a stream, too, at the far edge of the property, forming its western boundary, the clear water rippling over pebbles and shale with little black minnows swimming in its depths. A child’s paradise indeed, and yet, to my mind, there was something sinister and a little forbidding about it as perhaps there always is when the wilderness takes back its own.
Nicholas and Elizabeth seemed not to share my feelings, forging ahead of me along narrow pathways, advising me where to step in order to avoid the worst of the encroaching stems and branches and pointing out various hidey-holes which they had discovered. At last, however, we arrived at the pretty wrought-iron gate which opened into the small copse beyond. Ordering the children to stay where they were, I pushed it wide and stepped into the shadow of the trees.
Adela had been right: the copse was not large but it was dense, a stand of ancient oaks, a remnant, I guessed, of more extensive woodland that had once covered the surrounding countryside. I moved forward cautiously, my heart beating a little faster as I did so, half expecting to find a body lying on the ground. No such grizzly sight awaited me, however, but the earth beneath the trees was muddy, no sunlight penetrating the thick canopy of branches, just beginning to green with new leaf. And I noticed one place in particular where the mud had been churned up as though a horse had been tethered there.
But that, of course, was more than likely as Roderick Jeavons must have tied his mount up somewhere when he entered the garden to seek out Celia. The animal could have been standing there some while as he had first to find her before he could press his suit. And I was then able to see the imprints of his boots deeply gouged into the earth, a man in a fury at being rejected yet again, mounting his horse and riding away. But had he? Or had he re-entered the garden and vented his anger by abducting Celia — or worse, by killing her?
I pulled myself up short. If the former, she would have screamed and resisted. One of the children must have heard her and gone to see what was wrong. If the latter, where was the body? Clemency and Sybilla had, according to the women’s account, thoroughly searched the garden and nothing had been found. Besides, the good doctor would surely not have risked his livelihood and reputation by anything so crude. If someone really was trying to murder the Godsloves, one by one, then he or she was demonstrating greater patience and subtlety than that. And another thought struck me. If Roderick Jeavons were the man, then he would most certainly not wish to kill Celia, who was the object of his desire. On the other hand, he might have grown tired of waiting and simply abducted her, but where would he hide her until he could force her consent to their marriage? Presumably he led a perfectly normal domestic life with a housekeeper to attend to his well-being. Or did his house have a cellar where he could keep her captive? Where he could. .?
I shook my head angrily and the visions of torture and rape receded. I was letting my imagination run away with me. I was getting as bad as the women and allowing their hysteria to influence my way of thinking. Arbella Rokeswood was probably right, I told myself. There was a perfectly logical explanation for Celia’s disappearance, and the answer would soon be revealed.