I did as instructed, stopped and turned, but saw her waving me away even as she cried again, ‘Stop, thief!’
Being pretty quick on the uptake, I understood her plan and legged it at top speed.
To steady the nerves and clear the brain, I pulled out the cigarette case and, making sure I was well concealed from the house, set fire to one. I pictured Georgiana explaining to an irate Sir Henry that she had surprised a burglar. She would then be attempting to persuade the old boy that since nothing was missing there was no need to call in the police. It was obviously better if I was not to be seen anywhere in the vicinity until things had calmed down a bit and Sir Henry was reassured that no light-fingered bibliophile had made off with his History of the Crusades in five vols, calf-bound, with slight foxing to the endpapers.
I found myself wandering on a path through some trees – not really a wood, but what I suppose you’d call a grove. There were cedars, elms and other specimens it was too dark to be sure of: a silver birch or two, perhaps. Spindly chaps, anyway.
In their shade, I paused to take stock. Having missed the servants’ high tea, I’d dined later off a slice of unwanted beef fillet with horseradish and a wedge of cheddar; the cognac had settled the whole thing nicely. Up in the branches above me I could hear what I fancied was a nightjar: a churring noise followed by what sounded like someone licking his lips. A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot; and a Dorset grove on a warm midsummer night is about as close to Eden as one can come without going to Mesopotamia, or wherever Dame Judith Puxley insisted the original had been.
I wasn’t sure why, in the rather awkward circs, I was having these bosky thoughts. Ask anyone in the Drones and they’ll tell you that Wooster, B. is essentially a boulevardier – a man of pavement, café and theatre. I may be possessed of half a dozen decent tweed suitings, even the odd plus-four and deerstalker, but mine is not – au fond, as I believe the French say – a rustic soul.
Yet something had got right in amongst me on this balmy night, and if I had an inner bumpkin, he was there with straw in his hair, grinning toothlessly and going ‘ooh-arrr’ along with the best of them. I sat down with my back to a tree trunk. I tried to clear my mind of Hackwoods and Venableses, just to get a good whiff of night air and remember what a deuced lucky fellow I was, dropped catch or no.
Then I felt something with about five hundred feet make a determined effort to get up my trouser leg. That’s the trouble with these countryside moments: they don’t last. Reality tends to stick an oar in.
A glance at the wrist told me it was some minutes past midnight. I knew that Bicknell went round like a gaoler at eleven-thirty on the dot, securing all entrances. My rude billet, as we know, was on the third floor at the back, with a view – if that’s not too big a word – over the yard that led to the stables. The front of Melbury Hall had a fire escape that zigzagged from the third floor to the ground, with a particularly showy landing outside what I took to be Sir Henry and Lady H’s bedroom. There was no such provision on the other side of the house, where the servants were presumably expected to knot the sheets or take a flying jump.
Georgiana’s calming efforts seemed to have worked. I could see the light in the library go off, followed by one or two on the first floor, including that in the biggest bedroom. There appeared to be no imminent sign of the local constabulary or of the sleeping villagers of Kingston St Giles being roused by their feudal lord to a hue and cry. Then I saw a light on the second floor, in a room that must have overlooked the lawns – a pleasant but modest nook, almost certainly where they would have shoved the junior cousin, the Sonya Whatsit of the estate. I could see that the fire escape extended in a more modest form to this, the south front of the house. I imagined Georgiana doing a final bit of blue-pencil work behind the curtains before snuffing out the candle.
The odds on the ravell’d sleeve of care being knitted up to any appreciable extent as far as I was concerned looked pretty slim. In the sober light of day, it would probably have been clear to anyone in my position that the priority was not to make matters worse. The grounds and messuages of Melbury Hall were sure to contain a hayloft or a stable with some comfortable sacking; it would not have taken much, after all, to try the bones less than the visiting valet’s cell.
Unfortunately, the sober light of day was not where I found myself; rather the opposite. It was beginning to turn cold, as English nights do in June, quite suddenly. The thought of bunking down with the horses failed to appeal. It seemed to me, on the other hand, a quite excellent idea to shimmy up the fire escape, go round the south side to Georgiana’s light, knock on the window, check that all was well and thence make my way up indoors to my own room. As I cut along back towards the house, I could picture Georgiana’s face when she let me in; a hero’s welcome and a goodnight peck were mine for the taking.