Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [92]
‘You didn’t tell me you’re to be at the dinner, Miss Lock. Aren’t you the lucky one.’
Typically, she was not in the least envious, simply pleased at what she saw as my good fortune.
‘It’s only to fill up the table,’ I said.
‘There’s going to be real turtle soup. And you’ll see all the lovely dresses close to. What shall you wear?’
‘My lavender with the silk fichu, I suppose.’
She looked doubtful. ‘Will that do?’
‘It will have to. Besides, I’ll be right at the end of the table and nobody will notice me,’ I said, sincerely hoping that would be the case.
We spent most of the morning on Aesop’s Fables. The children weren’t capable of concentrating on anything more demanding, and neither was I.
When their dinner time came, at half past two, I said I wasn’t hungry and would go for a walk outside to clear my head. Betty naturally put it down to excitement and nerves, but I was desperate to find a way of communicating with Amos Legge. In addition to the practical matter of asking him to bring Rancie, there was his mysterious message about the two gentlemen in the travelling carriage. I’d written a note to him during lessons, asking if he could meet me at the bottom of the back road at six o’clock the following morning, hoping I’d be able to manage that even though I couldn’t get all the way to the stables. My idea was to find a boy and give him sixpence that I’d discovered in the bottom of my bag to deliver the note. Since the stableyard was usually the best place to find a spare boy, I walked across the courtyard and through the archway. The cobbled yard was quiet and neatly swept, horses dozing in the afternoon calm and the place almost deserted. Not a boy in sight, just a man sitting peacefully on the mounting block, smoking a clay pipe.
‘Amos Legge!’
‘Good afternoon, miss.’ He stood up and put out his pipe with his thumb. ‘I asked one of the maids to let you know I was here, but I couldn’t tell if she’d heard me right.’
‘Just the very man I wanted to see. Mr Legge, could you please have Rancie here in the stableyard tomorrow night, after dark?’
‘On the move again, are we?’
‘I think so, yes. Only there’s so much I don’t know, where we’re going or even if, or …’
‘Don’t you worry, miss, I’ll have her here. Did you get that message I sent you?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s why I came. I’ve been turning it over in my mind … Maybe it did mean something and maybe it didn’t, only it was strange, and seeing as you were staying here, I thought somebody should know.’
‘About the two men in the travelling coach?’
‘The lardy one and the one that had the accident with his boot. Only I didn’t hear about it until after they’d gone, and with the others saying the lad was a bit simple, I didn’t quite know what to make of it.’
It was no use trying to hurry him. I suggested we should sit down on the mounting block and he dusted it off for me with his hat.
‘When I left, they were still waiting for the wheelwright,’ I said. ‘What happened after that?’
‘They got the wheelwright in the end. The two gentlemen were waiting in the guvnor’s office most of the time. He kept offering them one of his own vehicles to go on up to the Hall, but they wouldn’t hear of it. It was go in the travelling coach or nothing. Anyways, there’s this lad helps out in the yard sometimes. They make out he’s a gawby, but I reckon