Miss Turner’s face was white and it was shining with sweat. She took a breath. She put her hand against her forehead. She licked her lips and she looked around at all of us. “I… I’m so sorry. I.. ”
Just then a number of things happened very quickly.
From somewhere in the forest behind us, to the south, came the flat hard crack of a rifle.
And something made a thunking noise somewhere as I spun to look at the Great Man. He had turned toward the sound of the shot and I knew without being able to see it that his chin was raised and he was daring the rifleman to try again.
All the others had turned, too, and frozen in position.
I shoved my hand into my pocket, going for the Colt.
And then, behind me, Miss Turner said “Oh,” very quietly, and I turned back to her and her eyelids fluttered and her blue eyes rolled upward and became white and she slumped sideways off the horse.
Chapter Ten
I ripped my hand from my pocket and I sprinted toward Miss Turner. Just as her leg slipped over the saddle, I caught her shoulders with my left arm and I scooped my right arm up beneath her knees. She sagged into the crooks of my elbows, her head lolling, her arms loosely swinging. I carried her over to the bench and laid her out on it and I squatted down beside her. I was looking for the bullet wound. I couldn’t find it.
I sensed the people crowding around me. Mrs. Corneille, Mrs. Allardyce, Lord Bob. I searched for the Great Man, found him standing just behind me. He looked puzzled, maybe even worried, but he was alive and unwounded. There hadn’t been a second shot.
Miss Turner was breathing but her face was white. I put my hand against her forehead. Cold and damp. I put my fingertips against her wrist and felt for her pulse. It was there, fluttering like the wings of a wounded bird.
Mrs. Corneille said “Is she…?”
I said, “I think she’s just fainted.”
“A bloody poacher!” growled Lord Bob. “Filthy sod!” His beetle brows were lowered and a bright furious red was glowing beneath the gray dust that coated his face. He snapped his goggles down over his eyes, leaving two rings of indented flesh on his forehead. “I’ll show the swine!”
He scurried off to the motorcycle, a flurry of tweed. I turned back to Miss Turner. I heard the howl of the motorcycle behind me as I unknotted the tie at her throat. Lord Bob, revving up the machine.
“Mr. Beaumont!” said Mrs. Allardyce.
The motorcycle exploded away with a roar of engine and a clatter of gravel.
“She needs air,” I said. I unbuttoned the first two buttons of her blouse. Lightly, I tapped Miss Turner’s cheek. Nothing from her. I noticed that her skin was as soft as a child’s. I ignored that.
“May I?” Mrs. Corneille. She was beside me now, on my right. Her shiny black hair swung forward like a silk curtain as she leaned toward Miss Turner. I could smell her perfume. I ignored that too.
She took Miss Turner’s right hand between hers and rubbed it gently.
I tapped the cheek again. “Miss Turner?”
She took a deep staggered breath and her lids snapped back and those dazzling blue eyes looked at me.
Twice now in less than twelve hours I had been the first thing a young woman saw when she came back to earth. Miss 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 fifteen feet high. I could see a green line of hedge beyond the top of the wall. We were beneath the level of the formal garden, and at its far side.
“What’s this?” I asked him, and nodded to the door.
“Freight tunnel,” he said. “Goes under the garden, into the house. Comes out near the kitchen. They used to bring goods this way. Barges on the river, horsecarts up the road here, and then down the tunnel to the house. Faster back then. Don’t use it nowadays.”
On the door to the right, at waist level and just where it joined the other door, there was a rusted lockplate with a large keyhole in its center. I bent forward and examined the keyhole. It looked like no one had used it in years. But I was no expert at locks. I glanced down. No tracks in the crushed stone, that I could see. But, as I had told Lord Bob, I was no expert at tracks.