Page 36 of Linenfold (The Alice Chronicles #4)

A t Philip’s behest, she has escorted Master Cranley to his bedchamber and locked him in.

‘I’ll be talking to him later,’ Philip said, speaking across him to Alice, not even looking at his secretary, far less addressing him.

Utterly downcast, Master Cranley crept docilely to sit on his bed and, as he said to Alice, ‘await my doom.’

And now she stands in the kitchen where the women of the household have gathered, perhaps for safety in numbers after the word went round so fast. More likely they want to gossip about the men gone off to hunt “the killers” in Maureen’s relishing tones.

‘And to think I was close by them,’ the cook declares, ‘I more than any of you, and might have been struck down at any time!’ Maureen revels in imagined perils.

The others are agog. Betsy rolls her eyes.

Alice pushes through the press. ‘Betsy, are all the men gone?’

‘All. They took what mounts they could. Angus won’t have gone, he’d just get lost.’ There is a collective chuckle, but Rose speaks up. ‘Not so, I saw Angus walking up towards the road when Master Egerton and Philip first sought them.’

‘What of His Lordship’s men?’

‘Jackson joined the search with Pearce,’ Rose tells her. ‘Farley and Larkin went off together.’

Alice opens the door. ‘You will all stay here, bar this door behind me, and the front door, and the dairy, Grace. Allow no one in unless you know them personally. Not the French women, or any man or woman you do not know. Check the windows are all secured.’ She closes the door behind her and heads for the stables. It opens again immediately.

‘Mistress!’ Betsy calls. ‘You cannot ride in your state!’

‘Please, Betsy, just do as I ask.’

Cassie as ever is ready for a run, but Alice picks stolid Athena who will settle for something sedate between a walk and a trot.

She urges the mare round the house in the direction Angus will have taken.

He will be a good ten to fifteen minutes ahead and if Lewis and Honorine catch sight of him, on foot he will have no hope if they decide to silence him.

At the road she hesitates. Left for London? Right for Guildford? Surely the searchers will already be quartering the main ways. And then she remembers Angus’s words, “Now I know where Tillotsons is.” She urges Cassie across the road and up the track.

By the time she breasts the hill, she has slowed to a walk and Angus does not hear her until she is a few dozen yards off.

He is stooping amongst the trees by the track, peering forwards.

The brown and curled ferns still standing waist-high afford him some concealment.

He is looking to where the chalky lane from Albury crosses the track ahead.

When he sees Alice, he points forward and puts a finger to his lips.

She slides from the saddle and leads Athena into the trees to tether her to a branch.

‘She’s gone straight over and down the slope, Tillotsons way,’ he whispers as she joins him. ‘Looking right and left and behind her all the time.’

‘Just the one? Have you seen the other one?’

‘No, mistress, just her.’

‘Which of them is it?’

‘Hard to say, with that cap, and her cloak all around. What’s to do, mistress? In the kitchen, they were talking about “killers”.’

She decides to soften the truth. There is no point in alarming Angus further. ‘They know something vital about Lord Hardcastle’s death.’

‘Frightened because a justice came, I suppose.’

‘Exactly that,’ she says.

Angus stands up and blows out a breath. ‘Then we can call her,’ he says in a normal voice, ‘tell her all’s well as it’s Master Egerton.’

‘No!’ She pulls him back down. ‘Stay hidden, Angus. We’ll follow and try to find Len and Master Tillotson. Whoever it is, we must take them back to High Stoke, and there could be a struggle.’

They make their way through the trees and cross the white chalk lane, then start down the slope. The cloaked figure is a few hundred paces ahead and moving briskly when Angus stops and points across the meadow running alongside. ‘There’s Master Tillotson, and Len with him.’

‘And the dogs,’ she says. ‘He must be coursing.’ As she speaks a streak of brown, all flying ears and springing legs, leaps across the meadows heading straight for Alice and Angus, heeling away at the last second to bound down the slope. Jeremy’s two dogs surge in pursuit. The hare has no chance.

But the cloaked figure hastening downhill turns at that moment, sees two dogs closing in, and takes to her heels, racing and scrambling through the trees down into a hollow.

She jumps, falls, is up again in a moment and running, cap gone, hair flying loose.

It is Honorine, Alice realises, darker hair than the other one.

Arms windmilling to bat away boughs that would brush in her face, she dashes headlong to a thin stretch of water and splashes straight in.

Alice and Angus have broken cover and are in pursuit. Behind them Jeremy and Len come over the crest, closing with them as the dogs chase their quarry.

Jeremy comes alongside, straining his eyes down the slope. ‘Is that one of the Frenchwomen?’

‘We must stop her. She’s a witness to murder. She mustn’t escape!’ Already Alice is blown with the effort, slowing.

Jeremy smiles. ‘She’s already caught. Leave it to us. Len, that way. Angus? Follow me.’

As the three chase downhill, Jeremy bellows a command.

Ahead, the dogs come up all standing by the water.

Honorine is wading knee-deep towards the far bank.

On either side, thin withies curve and meet over the water.

Cover of a sort. The growth thickens where the withies sit progressively closer along the bank.

Still in the water the girl pushes on, her body driving hard to boost her progress as she hastens round a bend in the tunnel of branches arching overhead.

Alice loses sight of her but the two dogs stalking along the near bank stare intently.

Len is already splashing to the far side where a series of rush screens is placed at an angle to the water.

Jeremy, now down in mid-stream, moves easily along while Angus tracks the dogs on the margins.

They come to a halt and wait. Jeremy calls something in French and a minute later, Honorine wades out of hiding and allows herself to be secured on a length of cord wrist to wrist with Angus.

Hair dripping, clothes clinging from having crouched up to her neck in the freezing water to avoid detection she shivers uncontrollably all the way to Jeremy’s house.

They sit her by the fire at Tillotsons, but it could be hours before her clothes dry out.

All five crowd Jeremy’s kitchen where his maidservant Florence is heating ale and warming something in a pot over the hearth.

‘It was going to have joints of hare in it,’ Jeremy says, ‘but the hare lives to run another day.’

‘What was it you called out in French?’ Alice asks.

‘I remembered that in France, they course with dogs who follow by scent,’ Jeremy explains.

‘So she thought if she hid in the water they’d lose the scent, and when they were gone she could climb out.

She didn’t know our English dogs course by sight, following along the bank.

Once she had retreated that far along the decoy there was no way out.

The branches are set progressively closer and the water gets narrower. That’s how we catch the ducks.’

‘Fortunate you can speak French.’

‘My mis-spent youth.’ Jeremy smiles. ‘A few years ago my father sent me to the North to finish my studies, but I preferred to go south instead. Now, do you excuse me, I must ask my grandmother what she can provide of dry clothes.’

They arrive back at High Stoke to the thrilled stares of the household.

Jeremy and Len stop to talk with Jack who describes the sweep of the area towards Merrow that he and Philip made.

As yet there is no news of Louise-Lewis.

Philip has taken charge of Honorine who will be confined in the little accounts room off the screens passage.

Jeremy’s grandmother, whom Jack described to Alice as talking only of herself and her past conquests, came to the rescue at Tillotsons, after a fashion.

Excitedly chattering of the very gown for Honorine to wear and babbling happily of the man who became intoxicated at sight of herself in it, Grandmother bore the girl away to her chamber to strip off her soaked garments.