Escapade by Walter Satterthwait Page B

Turner didn’t seem any more thrilled than Cecily Fitzwilliam had seemed last night.
    She frowned. “What happened?”
    “You’ve fainted,” said Mrs. Corneille.
    Miss Turner looked at her. She raised her head from the bench, as though trying to sit up. Mrs. Corneille touched her shoulder gently. “Not just yet, Jane. Rest a moment.”
    I stood up.
    Mrs. Allardyce said to Miss Turner, “You gave us a terrible fright. What on earth —"
    Mrs. Corneille turned and glanced back at her. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes were narrowed and her lips were grim. Mrs. Allardyce shut her mouth.
    Off to my right, two small black figures were running toward us, down the slope from the manor house. Servants.
    I stepped over to the Great Man. Under my breath, I said, “Go back to the house with the rest of them. Wait for me in your room.”
    “Phil—”
    “Just do it, Harry. I’ll be back.” I set off in a run after Lord Bob.

    I LOPED ALONG the walkway and then down the lawn toward the formal garden, following the trail of the motorcycle across the lush
    green grass. The machine was parked beside a row of hedges at the garden’s far end, along the edge of the woods.
    That was about right, I thought. The rifle shot had seemed to come from the forest somewhere near here.
    Ahead of me there was a narrow path into the forest. I marched up to it, stopped, looked back toward the tall tree with the bronze-red leaves. One of the servants was leading the horse down the walkway, along the course I had just taken. Everyone else was walking in a loose group up the gentle green rise to the house. In the sunshine, under that clear blue sky, they looked like they were returning from some sultry summer picnic.
    Right here, I thought. Right here is probably where he stood when he fired.
    About a hundred and fifty yards from here to the tree. Not an easy shot, especially firing slightly uphill.
    I glanced around. No repentant snipers down on their knees, begging me to run them in. No signed confession nailed to a tree. No empty cartridge anywhere. The mossy ground was still spongy from last night’s rain and there were footprints in it, but too many of them. Lord Bob had gone tramping through here.
    The trail twisted down the hill for twenty or thirty yards until it ended at another path. This one was wider, almost a road, with a surface of crushed black stone. To the right it led up the hill, in the direction of the house, which was out of sight now. To the left it led down the hill and disappeared about forty yards away, behind the trees.
    Lord Bob came around the bend in the road and stopped. I walked down the pathway, toward him.
    “Beaumont,” he said. “Seen anyone?”
    “No.”
    “Look here,” he said. “You’re an American. How’s your woodcraft, eh? Following a trail, Fenimore Cooper, all that?”
    “You mean broken branches, bent twigs?”
    He brightened. “That’s it, yes.”
    “No good at all.”
    “Ah.”
    “Where does this go?” I nodded down the path.
    “Eh? Oh. Down to the river. No luck there. Went down that way myself just now. Nothing.” He looked around him, at the forest that seemed to go on for miles. “Bloody bastard could be anywhere.”
    “What’s up here?” I nodded up the path.
    He seemed puzzled by the question. “The manor, of course.”
    “Could we take a look?”
    He frowned. “You can’t be thinking a poacher would go that way?”
    “Worth a look.”
    He stared at me for a moment and frowned again. Probably wondering why a personal secretary was so interested in poachers. But he was a gentleman, and finally he shrugged. “Very well. Come along.”
    The two of us trod up the gravel road. The earthen banks on either side of it grew higher until they rose above our heads. The road became a kind of narrow valley running between the steeply sloping ground and the tall trees climbing off the ridges up there. We ended at a tall, broad, double wooden door set into a wall of stone about