Standish answered with stony silence. He led the horse away.
Three hours later, it occurred to Quayle he should have brought something to eat. He had gone on a ramble to the far reaches of the grounds with nothing more than a sore leg, cigarettes, and a half-full hip flask of brandy.
He also realized he didn’t much fancy winter in the countryside. The air had a forbidding and arctic bite to it, the trees were all dead, and the ground was sodden. And nowhere on the estate was the schoolmaster to be found — as far as he could determine.
In the late afternoon, Quayle found the Wickern boys back in the schoolroom. They were reading — one had a book on British naval victories, the other a book on Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. Neither was in a pressing hurry to acknowledge the inspector’s presence.
He stood in front of their desks and cleared his throat.
Rawdon eventually looked up.
“What was his secret?” Quayle asked.
The child didn’t answer. His expression gave away nothing.
Richard glanced at his brother. It was an icy stare.
“You said the schoolmaster had a dirty secret. What was it?”
“It is distasteful,” Richard answered on his brother’s behalf. “And we do not care to discuss it.”
Rawdon brought a single finger vertically to his pursed lips and made the gesture of silence. “We’re reading,” he whispered. The pair of them returned to the depths of their books.
Quayle exhaled a gust of air. The two boys might have been child-ren, but they had mastered the landed gentry’s ability to thoroughly ignore anyone should they choose to.
“Last night, someone went to open the door to my room,” Quayle said. “That was you two boys, wasn’t it?”
Richard nodded unabashedly. “You are correct.”
No explanation was forthcoming.
Quayle put a cigarette to his mouth. “May I ask why?” He took out his matches.
“We were on patrol,” Rawdon answered. “And we would prefer it if you did not smoke in this room.”
“What do you mean — you were on patrol?“
“Night watch,” Richard said. “We patrol the house at set times during the evening.”
“We don’t want to be caught off guard,” Rawdon added. “If there is an attack, it will come in the night.”
Quayle returned his cigarette to the case. He shook his head. “You boys are utterly obsessed with this war.”
“War is a serious thing, Inspector,” Richard remarked.
“You’re children. You’re living here in the lap of luxury. You’re hundreds of miles from the hell that is London at the moment, or the Continent. You should be enjoying your childhoods.”
The sound of a distant bell echoed in the hall outside the schoolroom. The two boys instinctively closed their books and stood up from their desks.
“Excuse us,” Richard said. “That is our call to dinner.”
“So, where is the schoolmaster?” Mrs. Chalmers asked.
“Yes,” young Margaret asked. “Do you know what’s happened to him?”
Quayle shook his head. “No, I don’t.” He glanced across the table at Standish. The old man avoided his eyes and drank from his mug.
The four members of the household staff, together with the inspector, were back at the dinner table in the servants’ hall. They were eating a supper of bangers and mash, albeit meager portions. Outside the house, the howling of wind could be heard. The weather had turned in the night.
Mrs. Chalmers looked dissatisfied. “Have you in fact learnt anything about his disappearance?”
Quayle wiped his lips on a napkin. “I don’t know where the schoolmaster is, but I am certain of three things.”
“It’s going to snow soon,” Joseph said. He giggled. “Everything will be white.”
Standish hit the boy over the back of the head to shut him up, after which Joseph stared at the tabletop with a sour expression.
“I’m certain he didn’t leave this house of his own volition,” Quayle said. “His personal effects are still present in his room. Simply put, as you yourself observed, Mrs. Chalmers — four pairs of shoes.”
“And the second thing?” she asked him.
“Black was well traveled. The markings on his suitcase demonstrate that — Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna, and so on. And yet his passport is not to be found.”
“Did you not find it in his room?”
“No. In fact, it’s the only possession of Black’s that does seem to be missing. I am certain the explanation for its absence will prove important.”
“What is the third thing?” young Margaret asked.
Quayle ran his eyes around the table. They came to a rest on Standish. “I am absolutely certain there are people in this house who know more about what happened to the schoolmaster than they are telling me.”
Young Margaret noticed the inspector’s stare.
“I’m going into the village tomorrow,” Quayle said. “I’m going to call on the local constabulary, and the constabulary for the district. I’m going to organize a thorough search of this entire house and of the grounds. I will get to the bottom of this mystery, you can sleep soundly on that.”
Mrs. Chalmers had also noticed. She herself was now staring at the groundsman.
“And when the truth comes out,” Quayle added. “I may find I am not a happy man.”
“Standish,” Mrs. Chalmers asked. “Do you know something about where the schoolmaster’s gone?”
The old man shook his head. He ignored their eyes and proceeded to light his pipe.
At that moment, upstairs in the schoolmaster’s bedroom, Richard was seated on the edge of the bed. He was examining Quayle’s police notebook, having already quietly and efficiently gone through the inspector’s other belongings.
Downstairs, the door to the servant’s dining room was open, and outside in the hallway, unseen by any of those seated at the table, was Rawdon. His back was hard against the wall next to the open doorway and his head was crooked, affording him the best position to hear the conversation from within.
Quayle lit a cigarette. “Mrs. Chalmers, did you know that Richard and Rawdon come out and play at night, after everyone’s gone to bed?”
“They do?” This was news to her.
“They patrol the house, pretending to be soldiers.”
Young Margaret was nodding. “I’ve heard them.”
“Well, they should be in their room and in bed,” Mrs. Chalmers said. “They shouldn’t be out at night.”
“I don’t think they should be playing with rifles, either,” Quayle added. “Whether they’re loaded or not.”
Standish cleared his throat. “If the German army comes, them two young masters will be the only ones here to protect us.” He swallowed the last contents of his mug, stood it on the table with a clap, and got to his feet. He muttered something to Joseph, clipped the boy about the head, and then the two of them left.
Mrs. Chalmers gave their departure a long stare. “I hope this dreadful war ends soon,” she said. “So we can all live normally again and this house can be back to the way it should be.”
“Amen to that,” Quayle said.
Sometime after one in the morning, Quayle woke. The bedroom door was open, and the bed was shaking. There were shadows — someone had climbed onto the bed and had straddled him. Clomp. He was hit in the head with a club of wood and knocked unconscious.
Quayle regained some of his senses. His limbs were bound with tight rope. He could see little. He was on his side, less than a foot above the ground, and was moving slowly along the hallway — he was lying on the piano trolley.