Peter Lovesey - The Tick of Death

Cribb quietly locked his bedroom door from the inside, withdrew the key and pocketed it. He crossed to the window, pushed it up and looked down at the conservatory roof, ten feet below. After the Alcazar Hotel, this promised to be child’s play. He picked up a length of rope he had earlier scavenged from the coach-house, and firmly secured one end of it to the door-handle. The other he dropped over the window-ledge, leaning after it to see how far down it extended. Far enough for a controlled descent to the frame of the conservatory roof. He tested the strength of the rope, seated himself on the sill, swung his legs over and turned inwards, shifting the weight of his body on to his stomach. Gripping the rope ahead of him, he began to let himself down.

It was after two in the morning, an hour and a half since he and Devlin had retired, and they had been the last to go up. Rossanna had gone first, soon after eleven, leaving the others at a poker game. ‘Our river trip last night has quite upset my routine,’ she had announced. ‘If I don’t retire at once, I shall fall asleep in my chair. Too ridiculous for words! I shall probably wake up in the small hours wanting breakfast when everyone else is deep in slumber. Are you an early riser, Mr Sargent? You look as though you might be. Patrick ought to be, as a sportsman, but he never stirs before nine when he is staying here, do you, Patrick? And Father sometimes sleeps until noon. Well, you need not tell me, because I shall hear for myself. My room is on the first floor landing and I know every loose floorboard in the corridor above. When I hear you, I shall know that I am no longer the only one awake in the house.’ Cribb had not been sure whether she said this to discourage initiatives by night, or the reverse. At any rate, he had decided already that he would have to find a way downstairs that did not bring him into contact with the floorboards, and that was why he was once again performing on a rope.

He lowered himself to the level of the room below his and paused there, trying to see in. It was a first-floor bedroom, unoccupied. He could have forced an entrance through the window if he had wanted, but all it contained, he suspected, was Malone’s luggage. Certainly it had not been inhabited in the last twenty-four hours. Tonight he was looking for Thackeray, not infernal machines.

His feet touched the conservatory roof, lighting safely on one of the wooden crossbeams. The structure was sturdy, well able to support his weight. Leaving the rope dangling, he crossed the roof to a section where it overhung the main entrance, inset between the two gabled wings at the front of the house. On his level, there were the windows of the main first-floor landing. He went confidently to one he had unfastened earlier from the inside, eased it open and climbed into the house again.

During the period after dinner he had occupied himself profitably by making a mental sketch of the lay-out of the bedrooms. The second floor, where his own was, had one other, the manservant’s, built in to the gable opposite. The floor below housed Devlin, McGee and Rossanna, as well as the empty room below his. It was quite impossible, he had decided, for Thackeray to be imprisoned on the first or second floors, for every other room could be accounted for as a bathroom, linen-room or water closet.

There was something else that encouraged him to concentrate on the ground floor. While Rossanna had been cooking those devilled kidneys, he had noticed four trays set out on the dresser, obviously in anticipation of breakfast. Three were matching in design, finely lacquered and laden with expensive porcelain and silver. The other was made of plain, unvarnished wood and there was a tin porridge-bowl on it and a mug, of the sort provided in common lodging-houses. At the time, Cribb had taken them for the manservant’s. Later, he reflected that someone eating in the kitchen had no need of a tray; he would eat from the kitchen table. The probability was that it was for Thackeray. If so, it was not unreasonable to suppose that the place where he was confined was directly accessible from the kitchen. A tray of that description, without even a cloth on it, would have been glaringly conspicuous in any other part of the house.

He pulled the window gently closed and glided towards the stairs. His movements were confident. He had tested the boards on this floor very thoroughly earlier in the day. They were firm under his weight, not straining to betray him like those upstairs. Rossanna, even if she were awake, could not possibly know that he was passing within a yard of her door. Just the same, he drew a long breath when he was safely clear. The danger of McGee’s door opening, or Devlin’s, troubled him less than hers. He moved smoothly past and down the stairs. Without pausing, he crossed the tiled hallway to the dining room and so made his way into the kitchen.

It was darker there than it had been upstairs. The moonlight was all on the other side of the house. He hesitated at the threshold, remembering the myriad objects he might dislodge from shelves and hooks and send crashing to the slate floor. By degrees his eyes adjusted to the conditions. It was a large room, dominated on one side of the table by the range, and the other the dresser, fairly bristling with crockery. The four trays were set out ready for the morning, as before. Other objects, an ironing-board, a tin bath and a meat jack threatened to raise the house if he should accidentally knock them down. It was fortunate that he had not marched blindly in, because there were two fly-papers suspended near the dresser at the level of his head. He would probably have reacted to the unexpected contact by flinging out his arms in self-protection.

Two other doors led off from the kitchen: one, the tradesmen’s entrance, looked on to the kitchen garden; the other promised to be the scullery. He pushed the door behind him shut-and froze in his tracks. Something soft had touched his back, moving rapidly across the width of his shoulders. He wheeled round, and was confronted with a large canvas string bag, swinging gently from a nail on the back of the door. He grunted and moved decisively across the kitchen to the scullery.

A cat came to meet him as he opened the door, and smoothed its fur against his legs. He swung his eyes swiftly around the room. Dresser, sink, door, copper, mangle, door. The second door was the one that interested him. It probably led to a store for fuel or provisions, but it was bolted at top and bottom. He approached it and slipped the bolts. It opened easily. The cat ran inside. Cribb followed.

It was pitch-black. He whispered, ‘Thackeray?’

Not a sound.

‘Thackeray!’

A muffled groan from somewhere to his left.

‘Where are you, man?’

Thackeray’s voice, just coherent, said, ‘Can’t you per-ishers let a man have a wink of sleep?’

‘It’s me. Cribb.’

‘Blimey!’ A fumbling and scratching was followed by the striking of a lucifer, which immediately went out. ‘Blooming cat!’ A second attempt was successful. The lighting of a candle revealed the shaggy countenance of the constable who had once helped to arrest Charlie Peace. He was lying on a bed improvised from sacks stuffed with straw. Bundles of firewood were stacked on all sides of him. ‘Sarge, how did you find me?’

‘Never mind that,’ said Cribb. ‘Keep that candle away from the cat. This place is a blasted tinder-box. Now, Thackeray, are you all in one piece?’

‘Just about, Sarge, but I’ve had enough of this. I’ve been incarcerated here for two days with only a supply of candles and a Bradshaw’s Guide to keep me from going barmy. They bring me food twice a day and I can use the privy in the garden after nightfall-under escort, of course-but it ain’t my notion of a bank holiday weekend. Strewth, I’m glad you’ve come along to get me out of it.’