A Dangerous Fortune(166)

The same detective was dispatched to see Augusta. She was still living at Whitehaven House. With no money she could not hold out indefinitely, but so far she had succeeded in preventing the sale of the house or its contents.

A police constable assigned to check London steamship offices reported that a man answering the description but calling himself M. R. Andrews had booked passage on the Aztec sailing from Southampton tonight. The Southampton police were instructed to have men at the railway station and at the dockside.

The detective sent to see Augusta came back to report there was no answer when he rang and knocked at the door of Whitehaven House.

“I have a key,” Hugh said.

Magridge said: “She’s probably out—and I want the sergeant to go to the Cordovan Ministry. Why don’t you check Whitehaven House yourself?”

Glad of something to do, Hugh took a cab to Kensington Gore. He rang and knocked, but there was no answer. The last of the servants had left, obviously. He let himself in.

The house was cold. Hiding was not Augusta’s style, but he decided to search the rooms anyway, just in case. The first floor was deserted. He went up to the second floor and checked her bedroom.

What he saw surprised him. The wardrobe doors were ajar, the drawers of the chest were open, and there were discarded clothes on the bed and chairs. This was not like Augusta: she was a tidy person with an ordered mind. At first he thought she had been robbed. Then another thought struck him.

He ran up two flights of stairs to the servants’ floor. When he had lived here, seventeen years ago, the suitcases and trunks had been kept jam-packed in a big closet known as the box room.

He found the door open. The room contained a few suitcases and no steamer trunk.

Augusta had run away.

He quickly checked all the other rooms of the house. As he expected he saw no one. The servants’ rooms and the guest bedrooms were already acquiring the musty air of disuse. When he looked into the room that had been Uncle Joseph’s bedroom, he was surprised to see that it looked exactly as it always had, although the rest of the house had been redecorated several times. He was about to leave when his eye fell on the lacquered display cabinet that held Joseph’s valuable collection of snuffboxes.

The cabinet was empty.

Hugh frowned. He knew the snuffboxes had not been lodged with the auctioneers: Augusta had so far prevented the removal of any of her possessions.

That meant she had taken them with her.

They were worth a hundred thousand pounds—she could live comfortably for the rest of her life on that money.

But they did not belong to her. They belonged to the syndicate.

He decided to go after her.

He ran down the stairs and out into the street. There was a cabstand a few yards along the road. The drivers were chatting in a group, stamping their feet to keep warm. Hugh ran up to them, saying: “Did any of you drive Lady Whitehaven this afternoon?”

“Two of us did,” said a cabbie. “One for her luggage!” The others chortled.

Hugh’s deduction was confirmed. “Where did you take her?”

“Waterloo Station, for the one o’clock boat train.”

The boat train went to Southampton—where Micky was sailing from. Those two had always been cronies. Micky smarmed all over her like a cad, kissing her hand and flattering her. Despite the eighteen years’ difference in their ages, they made a plausible couple.

“But they missed the train,” the cabbie added.

“They?” Hugh said. “There was someone with her?”

“An elderly chap in a wheelchair.”

Not Micky, evidently. Who, then? No one in the family was frail enough to use a wheelchair. “They missed the train, you say. Do you know when the next boat train leaves?”

“At three.”

Hugh looked at his watch. It was two-thirty. He could catch it.

“Take me to Waterloo,” he said, and jumped into the cab.

He reached the station just in time to get a ticket and board the boat train.

It was a corridor train with interconnecting coaches, so he could walk along it. As it pulled out of the station and picked up speed through the tenements of south London, he set out to look for Augusta.

He did not have to look far. She was in the next coach.

With a quick glance he hurried past her compartment so that she would not see him.

Micky was not with her. He must have gone by an earlier train. The only other person in her compartment was an elderly man with a rug over his knees.

He went to the next coach and found a seat. There was not much point in confronting Augusta right away. She might not have the snuffboxes with her—they could be in one of her cases in the luggage van. To speak to her now would serve only to forewarn her. Better to wait until the train arrived at Southampton. He would jump off, find a policeman, then challenge her as her bags were unloaded.

Suppose she denied she had the snuffboxes? He would insist that the police search her luggage. They were obliged to investigate a reported theft, and the more Augusta protested the more suspicious they would be.

Suppose she claimed the snuffboxes were hers? It was hard to prove anything on the spot. If that happened, Hugh decided he would propose that the police take custody of the valuables while they investigated the contradictory claims.

He controlled his impatience as the white fields of Wimbledon sped by. A hundred thousand pounds was a big chunk of the money Pilasters Bank owed. He was not going to let Augusta steal it. The snuffboxes also symbolized the family’s determination to pay off its debts. If Augusta was allowed to make off with them, people would say the Pilasters were grabbing what they could, just like any ordinary embezzlers. The thought made Hugh angry.