Thieves Break In Read online

  The Baronet was dozing lightly in his chair, exercising a talent younger people rarely have, that of sleeping while sitting upright. His eight-year-old self was playing with his brother Richard in the woods; they were hunting dragons. Great fun, that had been. But something was wrong. Something had happened to Dicky. A shadow of unease fell across the Baronet’s dream; somewhere in the distance a woman screamed. Voices. Shouting. People never shouted at Datchworth. Running footsteps.

  The library door was flung open, something else that never happened at Datchworth. Sir Gregory awoke with a start. His imperturbable butler stood in the doorway, perturbed beyond measure. One could actually hear the man breathing. In his shaking hands he held some fragments of a china teacup.

  Crumper said, with something approaching anguish, “I beg your pardon, Sir Gregory. I’m afraid we’ve found Mr. Hillman.”

  Chapter 2

  JANUARY 1997

  Almost Seven Months Before Rob Hillman’s Death

  What ultimately would culminate in tragedy began as a minor domestic inconvenience—or a domestic inconvenience that would have been minor in a more modest household than Datchworth Castle. One of the lesser staff members, changing a light bulb in a narrow passageway on the ground floor, noticed a crack in the wall.

  Unfortunately, the wall in question dated from the twelfth century. When in 1403 the Knight Sir Edward Thorpe had commenced building upon the land granted to him by King Richard for services rendered in the west of Ireland, he had thought it good to incorporate into his new home the sprawling Norman ruins of Datchworth Castle. Family legend differed on the reasons for this decision; either Sir Edward believed the ruins occupied the best building site on the estate, or he thought every knight should have a castle, or he figured he could save a bundle on building costs by using the old walls, where they were still standing, and the old foundations. Sir Edward left to his descendants the nightmare of taking care of them.

  The current owner, having maneuvered his wheelchair down the passageway in the wake of Ralph Carlyle, his estate manager, to view both the crack and the evidence that it was slowly widening, did not have the luxury of summoning one of his numerous maintenance staff to simply patch the thing up. Datchworth was a Grade I Listed Building.

  “Damn and blast,” sighed Sir Gregory wearily. “Notify English Heritage.”

  English Heritage duly arrived in the form of a single official whose placid manner, upon inspecting the offending crack, gave way to a concern bordering on alarm. His report clearly telegraphed the urgency of the situation up the line of command, for a more senior inspector of masonry arrived at Datchworth instantly—that is, two weeks later. In the blink of an eye—that is, by the first of February, the place was crawling with English Heritage.

  They took photographs. They drew diagrams. They took (Sir Gregory swore to his neighbors) X rays. They scraped minute bits of mortar from between stones, and even more minute bits from the stones themselves, with tools they had obviously stolen from dentists. They sealed the resultant sacred milligrams of dust in tiny plastic envelopes, and dispatched them to undisclosed destinations.

  At some location remote from Datchworth there were meetings. Arguments. Reports. Recommendations. Finally, on a disagreeably overcast morning shortly before Valentine’s Day, Sir Gregory received a polite letter with the verdict. At least two-point-three-six-five square meters of the wall would have to be Disassembled and Rebuilt.

  Sir Gregory informed his nephew Derek that the upshot was that the masonry work would be a doddle, but the state-of-the-art scaffolding required to keep the rest of the wall supported while they delicately punched a bloody great hole in it, that was going to set them back a packet. Because of course the Family was going to have to pay for it. English Heritage only told you what you had to do, they didn’t foot the bill.

  And the bill was not going to be a trifle, because for one thing they had no idea what was behind the crack. When the original inspector had asked to see “the other side of this wall, please,” consternation had ensued. No one, it seemed, had the remotest idea where the other side of the wall was. That part of the house was an architectural hodgepodge, Sir Edward having been particularly assiduous in utilizing castle fragments in that area. The passageway, which Sir Gregory had taken to calling “the Scene of the Crack,” led from the old castle still-room (now the site of a desperately uninteresting display entitled “Datchworth through the Ages,” which, even on public days, attracted no more interest than it deserved) to a modern hallway leading past the visitors’ rest rooms into the original wing of Sir Edward’s manor house.

  A forty-seven-minute search by the English Heritage official, Mr. Hitch, accompanied by no less a personage than Crumper himself, through a miscellany of centuries, architectural styles, and rooms used and unused that together made rabbit warrens look as if they were laid out in right-angle grids, had produced no joy. Recourse was had to the muniment room. There the architect’s drawings for the modern hallway were unearthed, paper-clipped (English Heritage was shocked) to a four-centuries-old floor plan. Alas, when Mssrs. Crumper and Hitch had returned to the place which should have been the other side of the wall from the Scene of the Crack, they had discovered that neither drawing, old or new, entirely coincided with the layout of rooms and hallways in which they found themselves. They came dispiritedly to the conclusion that the architects hadn’t been able to find the other side of the wall, either, and had faked it.

  “Which means,” said the Baronet to his nephew, “that we’ve no idea whether the Crack is in the face of a hundred cubic feet of solid stone and is merely a cosmetic problem, and we might just as well stuff it with common or garden concrete, or whether it runs clear through a strategic supporting wall, which means that whole damn wing could fall down on top of us any minute if we don’t repair the thing correctly. And soon.”

  Derek made a face and a noise, both eloquent of understanding, and drained the last of the tea from his plain blue mug. He rose and picked up the teapot from the table between them, refilling first Sir Gregory’s china cup and then his own mug, saying, “Not something to take chances with, then.”

  “Alas, no. Ah, thank you, Lovely Boy.”

  Derek’s Mediterranean features softened into the smile he’d inherited from his Italian grandmother. For as long as he could remember, his uncle had called him that, and he liked it. Nice to be somebody’s Lovely Boy. He had certainly never been his mother’s. Nor Julie-the-Crumpet’s, either, though she had once used the term on him. He had rather bitten her nose off for it, which, as they’d been in bed at the time, was a bit ungentlemanly of him. Derek had tried to explain to her why she mustn’t use his uncle’s term of endearment for him, but found that the word “presumptuous” was tickling his tongue, and obviously he couldn’t say it. She’d have told him off for being a snob. She’d have been right.

  Derek shook thoughts of the Crumpet from his mind and resumed his seat. “So, Uncle, break it to me gently. How deep do we have to dig to finance this project?”

  “Impossible to say before we know what the wretched wall is holding up.”

  “Worst-case scenario?”

  “At this point it would only be a guess.”

  “Guess, then.”

  “I’m bracing myself for seventy thousand.”

  “Jesus,” said Derek, quietly.

  Sir Gregory, in deference (still) to his late wife, habitually refrained from taking the Lord’s name in vain, but he tolerated the practice in his heir, just as he tolerated the abominable mug that Derek fancied over a proper teacup. Besides, it was a reasonable reaction. Seventy thousand pounds out of the estate was seventy thousand less for Derek to inherit, and only an indecently wealthy saint could fail to care about such a sum. Derek would of course be indecently wealthy when his father died, but he would never, thank God, be a saint. Sir Gregory found saints tedious.

  “So sorry, Lovely Boy.”

  Derek summoned a laugh for his uncle’s sake and
waved a lavish hand. “What the hell! We can sell the plantation in Cuba.”

  That had been a family joke since the time of George III. (There were, presumably, lots of plantations in Cuba, but none of them had ever been owned by the Bebberidge-Thorpes.)

  The old man’s face crinkled into a smile, and he raised his teacup in a toast. “The plantation in Cuba it is, then! Meanwhile, I shall write to this Mrs . . .” He set the cup down on the marquetry table next to his chair, picked up the letter from English Heritage, and peered at it through his steel-rimmed spectacles. “Mrs. Roghaar. I shall tell her to storm the Castle and do her worst.”

  Miranda Roghaar, in fact, had been careful in her letter to prepare Sir Gregory for the worst, but she was very much hoping it wouldn’t come to that. Not just because she took no pleasure in inflicting huge expenses on those who owned and cared for the ancient buildings that were her passion, but because a wall whose other side could not be located might possibly have a function immensely more interesting than merely holding up half the castle. Reluctant, however, to create expectations which might never be fulfilled, she did not confide her hopes to Sir Gregory when she arrived at Datchworth. Instead, she proceeded to set up her invasion of his home in the most tactful and least intrusive manner possible.

  In this respect Mrs. Roghaar found the Scene of the Crack close to ideal. In a passageway rarely used in winter, right around a corner from the rest rooms that had been constructed for summer tourists, she and her team were well out of the family’s way. She hated jobs when they had to work in the owner’s bedroom or the family’s favorite sitting room or—worst of all—the kitchen. Here, the closest they came to the kitchen was a message from the cook informing them that if it suited their convenience, their elevenses (coffee and pastries) would be laid out for them in the Visitors Café (past the rest rooms, across the small courtyard), which was being opened for their exclusive use during their stay at the Castle. Lunch would be served in the same place, and were there any vegetarians or other dietary requirements to cater for?

  I’m in Heaven, thought Miranda Roghaar, and set her team to work. A drill scarcely thicker than a needle was carefully positioned, and a tiny tunnel began to creep through the wall at a rate of slightly less than one inch per minute.

  Some time later Crumper was in the library reporting to his master and to the young gentleman, a frequent and welcome guest at Datchworth, who was facing Sir Gregory across a Victorian games table. “Mrs. Roghaar now confirms her earlier estimate, Sir Gregory. The wall is no more than six inches thick, and she believes it is not—her exact words were, ‘structurally significant.’ ”

  “Well, thank God fasting. Better yet, thank God drinking. What do you say, Kit?” asked the Baronet, turning to his visitor.

  Kit Mallowan grinned first back at his host and then, man to man, at the butler.

  “I say the good sherry at least. What do you say, Crumper?”

  The butler allowed himself a small smile and murmured in his best courtly manner, “Very good, my lord.”

  “Yes, and Crumper,” added Sir Gregory, relief shining in his tired eyes, “when you’ve poured for us, get Mr. Banner on the telephone. We should put him out of his misery.”

  So Derek, who was entertaining a lady friend in his Victorian house in north Oxford, was informed that the amount he was not going to inherit was probably going to be rather less than seventy thousand pounds. He and his uncle exchanged heartfelt congratulations.

  “Kit and I are having a sherry on it and I suggest, Lovely Boy, that you do the same.”

  “Good idea, only I think I’ll make it a G and T. Ring me again the minute they guarantee it’ll be less than ten thousand, and I’ll switch to champagne.”

  By teatime the champagne was on ice, not at Derek’s house, which he had departed in jubilant haste, but at Datchworth, whither he was bound. The repairs, after all, were going to be comparatively modest, but the repair bill was now the last thing on anybody’s mind.

  Not Crumper, but Miranda Roghaar herself, had brought the next report to the library; Crumper merely ushered her into the room. It was immediately evident both to Sir Gregory and to the young man, whom the former was still ruthlessly drinking under the backgammon table, that Mrs. Roghaar had large news. Her demeanor was cool and competent, but the excitement crackled from her like static electricity.

  After the team had drilled several of their slender holes through the wall and determined its thickness, she reported, they had inserted fine rods with conspicuously colored tips through the holes, pushing them far enough to extend several inches out the other side. They had then recommenced the search for the other side of the wall. Floor plans, architects’ drawings, a compass, much persistence, and even the advice of Mrs. Draper, the retired housekeeper who had actually been born (unexpectedly) in the cloakroom off the entrance hall eighty years before and who knew every inch of the Castle, had not availed to locate the other side of the wall, even when it should have been obvious to a nearsighted hedgehog because it had funny little pointy things sticking out of it. “In short, Sir Gregory,” Mrs. Roghaar explained, “those rods are protruding into space about six inches, but they are not extending from any wall in any room that might conceivably be on the opposite side of the wall with the crack in it.”

  It took about two seconds for the light to dawn, and it struck the young visitor first.

  “Pull the other one!” Kit cried in high delight. “You don’t mean it!”

  But by that time Sir Gregory had caught up. He eyed the woman whom he had heretofore regarded as a polite nuisance and a necessary evil, and whispered incredulously, “A secret room?”

  Chapter 3

  SUMMER 1933

  Sixty-four Years Before Rob Hillman’s Death

  With intense pride of ownership, he surveyed his domain. It was without doubt the best room in the Castle. And it was his. Of course, everything was going to be his one day. Pater had told him so.

  Some people (naming no names!) didn’t like that. Well, that was just jolly rotten luck for them. After all, it wasn’t his fault he was the Heir.

  As the Heir, he would have to learn to take care of Datchworth, Pater had told him. Not just the Castle and the servants and all—the farms, the tenants, the whole estate. It would mean more lessons, and he wasn’t frightfully keen on lessons, but that was a long way off. Years and years. Probably not before he was seventeen. Right now there was just him and the room.

  He called it the Round Room. That wasn’t its proper name, but he fancied the sound: Rrrrouound Rrrrooom. And besides, that’s what made it special. Anybody could have a square room, or a rectangular room. And the windows, they were special, too. They were huge, bigger than any others in the old part of the Castle, and looking out of them you could imagine stepping down into a boat and sailing across the wide, wide place in the moat to all sorts of adventures. He’d asked Mater and Pater for a boat, just a little rowboat was all. He could tie it under one of the windows, and go straight onto the water from his room. All the chaps at school would be so jealous! But M & P had said that until he could swim better they didn’t want him “playing on the moat.” Playing! He wasn’t going to play, he was going to explore. But one could never get one’s parents to understand things like that.

  In fact, they’d even told him not to get up onto the windowsills when the windows were open. But he did it almost every day in the summer. It was too spiffing, really, to pass up, he thought, as he clambered up onto the one he liked best. One could look out over the moat when one was standing down in the room, but up here one could look down into it, down into the murky green water. Terrific fun to think what might be under it. Lost treasure from old Sir Edward he bet.

  Couldn’t stand up there for very long, of course. Mater might come by any time, and if she caught him, they wouldn’t let him keep the room. He didn’t want to have to move back to his old digs by the nursery. That was for little people.

  He turned his head to check t
he door. Crikey! It was opening. Jumping down from the windowsill, he grabbed the closest thing he saw: one of the woods from his set of golf clubs. Whistling casually, he strolled to the middle of the room, the big empty space, where he sometimes practiced his swing. He was carefully not even looking at the door, but when after a few moments he heard nothing, he turned to stare at it.

  What a gudgeon he was! It hadn’t been opening at all. It was just a teeny bit ajar. He must have forgotten to shut it properly when he came in. That was bad. A chap had to have his privacy. He crossed the stone floor to the door, opened it, and looked down the corridor. Nobody there. Good show. He closed the door with a strong push and heard the satisfying choonk of wood and the clack of the iron bar dropping into place.

  What he did not hear was the slow, careful breaths of the person who now crouched low behind the faded red leather trunk in the corner. Getting in without being spotted had been the first victory. The second victory would be to prolong the invasion, stretch it out for minutes and minutes until some great triumph came crashing . . .

  Meanwhile, back in the open space, the Master of the Round Room discovered he still had the golf club in his hand, and decided that practicing a few swings might be a good idea after all. He didn’t want Fletcher to laugh at him at his next lesson.

  So he swung the wood for a bit, but it was a lot more fun with a ball, so he tossed the wood onto the bed and got out the putter, the three balls, and the tin that Cook had given him.