‘You just stick to your specialization, Richard,’ Hughes replied, looking at him over his glasses in what Angela thought was a teacher-ish sort of way, ‘and I’ll stick to mine.’
‘You’re very quiet, Owen,’ Mayhew said, turning to a grey-haired man wearing bifocals who was sitting on the opposite side of the long table. ‘Anything to report?’
Owen Reynolds, one of the British Museum’s arms and militaria experts, leaned forwards. ‘I’m not sure. There’s not much here that’s obviously within my remit, apart from that suit of armour in the hall, so-’
‘Is that the real thing?’ Mayhew asked.
‘Definitely. It’s a particularly nice example of Gotischer Plattenpanzer, Gothic plate armour, dating from the fifteenth century. I’ll need to research it, but I think it might be Maximilian, which is really exciting. And I’ve found a couple of 1796-pattern heavy cavalry swords, one an Austrian pallasch and the other a British version. But apart from those, I haven’t found very much, so I’ve been checking the contents of the boxes in the salon or whatever that big room is called.’
Mayhew looked at him expectantly. ‘And?’ he asked.
Reynolds looked round the room. ‘Well, I’m not absolutely sure, but I think somebody’s been searching through them. Not one of us, I mean. In several of the chests the contents have been unwrapped and, as far as I can recall, everything in them was properly wrapped when we first inspected the boxes.’
There was a brief silence.
‘A burglar, you mean?’ Mayhew asked.
Reynolds spread his hands. ‘The problem is that we don’t know what there was in the boxes to start with. I mean, we don’t have a full inventory of their contents, do we? That’s what we’re here for.’
‘Do you think somebody has been pilfering?’
Reynolds shook his head. ‘I don’t know. There are a lot of valuable pieces on display in this house — silverware, that kind of thing — that any burglar would immediately realize were worth a lot of money, and I think one or two of those might be missing as well. But because there is no inventory I can’t be sure.’
Angela stood up. ‘Look, if Owen is right, and somebody has been here, the first thing we need to find out is how this burglar — or whatever he is — is getting inside. God,’ she lowered her voice, ‘you don’t suppose he’s in the house now, do you?’
Richard Mayhew shook his head. ‘No. But we have been leaving the front door open while we’ve been in here, so I suppose it is just possible somebody could have snuck in. We’d better keep it locked from now on.’
Angela nodded decisively. ‘I also want a complete sweep of the entire house, right now, just in case there is anyone lurking in the cellar or attic or somewhere.’ She was aware of how fast her heart was beating and took some deep breaths. She had narrowly escaped death the last time she’d been away and didn’t want to take any chances here.
‘OK, OK,’ Mayhew agreed, with a heavy sigh. ‘As soon as we’ve finished lunch we’ll search the place from top to bottom. Will that do?’
Ninety minutes later, hot and dusty from poking around at the top and bottom of the old house and everywhere in between, the team re-assembled somewhat grumpily in the kitchen. They’d found absolutely nothing to suggest that anybody else had been in the house recently, apart from an unfastened ground-floor window at the back of the house, which they’d now closed and locked, and which Angela had then jammed with a screw to ensure it couldn’t be opened from the outside.
‘Happy now?’ Richard Mayhew snapped.
Angela sighed. She still felt very uneasy. ‘I’d rather be back in London, thank you. But at least now I’m sure that there isn’t someone watching us.’
‘OK, now that we’ve finally got that cleared up, let’s get some useful work done, shall we?’ Mayhew hurried out of the kitchen.
Angela picked up another piece of china from the table to assess and catalogue. She had just opened up her laptop when she heard a startled gasp from David Hughes.
‘What is it?’ She spun round to look behind her.
‘I thought I saw something outside, some movement.’
He strode across the kitchen to the window and stared through the somewhat grubby panes of glass at the unkempt grassland outside.
Angela put down the china plate she’d been examining and stood up, joining him at the window moments later. The land in front of them sloped gently downwards, away from the house, dotted with clumps of shrubs and bushes, many of them easily big enough to conceal a person. And there was something else Angela noticed as well.
‘You might be right,’ she said slowly. ‘Every time I’ve looked out of this window since we got here, I’ve seen at least two or three rabbits hopping about out there. Right now, I don’t see any. Rabbits are extremely nervous animals. Because they’ve vanished, it could mean there is somebody out there.’ She shivered slightly. ‘God, I’ll be pleased when we’re finished and back in London. This place gives me the creeps.’
13
Jonathan Carfax stared through a pair of compact binoculars as the last of the cars drove away from the front of Carfax Hall. He knew he was invisible to the museum people, because he was standing in the shelter of a group of trees just outside the boundary of the property, but with a clear view of the house.
Earlier that afternoon, he’d crept closer to the house, approaching it from the rear and making use of the cover provided by various small groups of bushes, but he’d obviously been seen by somebody. As he’d moved towards the building, two faces had appeared at the kitchen window and looked out, but by that time he’d already run down the slope away from the house, and ducked down into a hollow behind a large rhododendron bush, where he’d lain and fumed. Jonathan was one of Oliver’s cousins, and like the rest of his family had only recently discovered that he’d been disinherited. Well, he’d told himself, as he became gradually colder and damper, he was going to do something about that.
Fifteen minutes later, he’d finally eased up into a crouch and then sprinted the last few yards to the boundary fence. Then he’d walked through the woods back to his car, and waited for the last of the British Museum people to leave.
Darkness was falling as Carfax walked back towards the house. The cars had left, and no one seemed to be around. A solitary bat swooped through the gloaming. So far, so good, he thought.
Quickly, he made his way to the window he’d left open at the back of the house. He took one more look round and pushed the sash upwards. Or tried to. It took less than a second for Carfax to realize that somebody — obviously one of the team from the British Museum — must have spotted the open catch and locked it.
‘Bugger,’ he muttered, backing away and retracing his steps. He had come prepared, though. In the boot of his car he’d assembled a selection of tools that he hoped would be enough for him to slip the window catch if he found it locked.
Ten minutes later he was back at the window, a long thin chisel in his hand, which he slid up between the two sections of the sash window. He positioned it against the locked catch and applied sideways pressure. Nothing happened — the catch remained obstinately closed. He tried again, and then again, each time increasing the level of force on the tool, and each time with precisely the same result — the catch didn’t move.
Carfax swore again, more loudly this time. He’d chosen that window because, of all those on the ground floor, that one had the loosest catch. Finding a chunk of stone that had fallen from some part of the house he dragged it across to the window and stood up on it. Almost immediately he spotted the screw jammed into the catch, and knew he wouldn’t be able to force it from the outside.