The first-floor windows were too high to gain entry, and the tangle of ivy on a broken trellis too fragile to climb. A rickety ladder leaned wearily against the wall, too dangerous to be pressed into service. I decided to try round the back.
I had to be careful. Only a sagging wooden fence and a narrow walkway separated the rear of the coach house from Miss Mountjoy’s overhanging willow tree: I’d have to crouch and run, like a commando on the beach.
At the end of the fence, on the left side of the walkway, was a wire compound attached to the coach house, from which issued, as I approached, an excited clucking. Inside the compound, there was a cage no more than two feet high—rather less, in fact—and in it was the biggest rooster I had ever seen: so large that he had to strut about his cage with stooped shoulders.
As soon as he saw me the bird made for the wires that separated us, fluttering up towards my face with a frightening rustle of wings. My first instinct was to take to my heels—but then I saw the pleading look in his marmalade eye.
He was hungry!
I took a handful of feed from a box that was nailed to the framework of the cage and tossed it through the mesh. The rooster fell upon the stuff like a wolf upon Russian travelers, his comb, as red as paper poppies, bobbing busily up and down as if it were driven by steam.
As he feasted, I noticed a hatch on the far side of the cage that opened into the coach house. It was no more than rooster-sized, but it would do.
Throwing a couple more handfuls of feed to distract the bird, I turned to the wire fence. It was only about seven feet high, but too far to leap up and grasp the upper frame. I tried to swarm up the mesh, but my shoes could find no grip.
Undefeated, I sat down and removed my shoes and socks.
When I come to write my autobiography, I must remember to record the fact that a chicken-wire fence can be scaled by a girl in bare feet, but only by one who is willing to suffer the tortures of the damned to satisfy her curiosity.
As I climbed, my toes stuck through the hexagons of the wire mesh, each strand like the blades of a cheese cutter. By the time I reached the top, my feet felt as if they belonged to Scott of the Antarctic.
As I dropped to the ground on the inside of the enclosure the rooster made a lunge for me. Since I hadn’t thought to bring a pocketful of feed to appease the famished bird, I was at his mercy.
He threw himself at my bare knees and I made a dive for the hatchway.
It was a tight fit, and I could only squirm my way painfully through the opening as the enraged bird pecked furiously at my legs—but moments later I was inside the coach house: still inside a wired partition, but inside.
And so was the rooster, who had followed me in, and was now flinging himself upon me like an avenging fury.
Seized by a sudden inspiration, I squatted, caught the bird’s eye, then with a loud hissing, rose up suddenly to my full height, weaving my head and flicking my tongue in and out like a king cobra.
It worked! In his feeble rooster brain, some age-old instinct whispered a sudden, wordless tale of terror that involved a chicken and a snake, and taking to his heels, he shot out through the hatch like a feathered cannonball.
I poked my fingers through the mesh and rotated the strip of wood that served as a latch, then stepped into the corridor.
I suppose my mind had been filled with images of dusty box stalls, of shriveled harness hanging from wooden pegs, of currycombs and benches, and perhaps a long-abandoned phaeton carriage lurking in some dim corner. Perhaps I was thinking of our own coach house at Buckshaw.
But whatever the case, I was totally unprepared for what I saw.
Beneath the low, beamed ceiling of what had once been a stable, couches upholstered in green and pink silk were jammed together like buses in Piccadilly Circus. Cameo jars and vases—some of them surely Wedgwood—stood here and there on tables whose old wood managed to glow even in the dim light. Carved cabinets and elaborately inlaid tables receded into the shadows, while nearby horse stalls overflowed with Royal Albert ewers and Oriental screens.
The place was a warehouse—and, I thought, no ordinary one at that!
Against one wall, almost hidden by a massive sideboard, was an exquisitely carved Georgian chimneypiece, in front of which, half-unrolled, was a rich and elaborate carpet. Something very much like it had been pointed out to me on more than one occasion by Feely’s friend and toady, Sheila Foster, who managed to drag their carpet into even the most casual conversation: “The Archbishop of Canterbury was down for the weekend, you know. As he was pinching my cheek, he dropped a crumb of his Dundee cake on our dear old Aubusson.”
I had just stepped forward to have a closer look at the thing when something caught my eye: a gleam in a dark corner by the chimneypiece. I sucked in my breath, for there in Miss Mountjoy’s coach house stood Sally Fox and Shoppo—Harriet’s brass fire irons!
What on earth—? I thought. How can this be?
I had seen the firedogs just hours before in the drawing room at Buckshaw. Brookie Harewood couldn’t possibly have crept back into the house and stolen them because Brookie was dead. But who else could have brought them here?
Could it have been Colin Prout? Colin was, after all, Brookie’s puppet, and I had found him hanging about the neighborhood just minutes ago.
Did Colin live here with Brookie? Miss Mountjoy had referred to Brookie as her tenant, which surely meant that he lived here. I hadn’t seen any sign of a kitchen or sleeping quarters, but perhaps they lay somewhere beyond the vast expanse of furniture or upstairs on the first floor.
As I retraced my steps to the central corridor, a car door slammed in the lane outside.
Crackers! It could well be Inspector Hewitt.
I ducked down and waddled my way towards a window, where I pressed myself flat against the back of a massive ebony armoire, round which I could peek out without being seen.
But it was not Inspector Hewitt who was coming towards the door: It was a walking bulldog. The man’s shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows, revealing arms that, except for their excessive hairiness, might have been a pair of Christmas hams. His shirt, open at the neck, revealed a forest of black, springy chest hair, and his fists clenched and unclenched as he strode purposefully towards the door.
Whoever he was, it was clear that he was unhappy. The man was powerful enough to tear me open like a packet of cigarettes. I couldn’t let him find me here.
It was unnerving to work my way back through the maze of furniture. Twice I startled at a movement close by, only to find that it was a reflection of myself in an uncovered mirror.
The man was already opening the door as I reached the caged cubicle. I slipped inside—thank goodness for bare feet and straw on the floor!—then lowered myself to hands and knees, then flat on my face, and began to crawl through the narrow hole to the outside.
The rooster was on me like a champion fighting cock. As I crawled, I tried to keep my hands up to protect my face, but the bird’s spurs were razor sharp. Before I was even halfway through, my wrists were bleeding.
Up the wire wall I swarmed, the rooster throwing himself again and again at my feet and legs. There was no time even to think of what the wire mesh was doing to my toes. At the top, I threw myself over the wooden bar and dropped heavily to the ground.
“Who’s there?” Inside the coach house, the man’s voice sounded as if he was no more than a few feet away. But unless he got down on his belly and crawled, he could not follow me—could not even see me in the outside pen.
He would have to return to his car, then come round behind the coach house in the lane.
I heard his footsteps retreating on the wooden floor.
Again I made a crouching scuttle along the crumbling fence—but wait: I’d forgotten my shoes and socks!