The Hyde Park Headsman - Anne Griffin Perry [178]
“Where? How should we dress? It must be practical. We shan’t need to break in literally. All we need should be in the greenhouse or the gardener’s shed. But we must have a lamp of some sort. I wish I had a policeman’s bull’s-eye lamp.”
“No time,” Emily dismissed it with regret. “I’ll take a carriage lamp, that should do.”
“How are we getting there? We can hardly expect your coachman to take us.”
“We’ll have to have him take us somewhere close by. That’s simple. I know someone just ’round the corner. I’ll say I’m calling there.”
“At one o’clock in the morning, and dressed fit to burgle,” Charlotte said with an involuntary giggle.
“Oh—yes.” Emily bit her lip. “Well perhaps not. I’ll say she was taken ill. I’ll dress to burgle underneath, and put a good shawl on the top. You will have to do the same.” And before Charlotte could protest, she added, “I’ll find you something. We’ll borrow from one of my maids. They wear plain stuff, dark colors. That will do excellently. Come. We have a great deal to see about.” She shot Charlotte a look of fear and trembling excitement.
With her heart in her mouth, Charlotte followed her.
At five minutes past one o’clock Charlotte and Emily, dressed in dark stuff gowns and with shawls tied over their heads (Emily most particularly to hide the pale gleam of her hair), crept along the pavement towards the garden entrance of Dulcie Arledge’s house. The carriage lamp was not lit; the streetlights were sufficient, and anyway, they wished intensely not to be noticed.
“Next one,” Charlotte whispered. “I’ve got a knife and a skewer in case it is locked.”
“A skewer?” Emily questioned.
“A kitchen skewer. You know—to test if things are cooked.”
“No, I don’t know. I don’t cook. Can you use it?”
“Of course I can. All you have to do is poke it in.”
“And the door opens?” Emily said with surprise.
“No of course not, fool! You know if the meat or the cake is cooked.”
Emily giggled, and immediately in front of her Charlotte gave a little hiccough of excitement, and giggled as well.
When they reached the gate it was indeed padlocked, and Emily was obliged to light the lamp and hold it, with her back to Charlotte and her eyes fearfully watching the road, while Charlotte twiddled the skewer around carefully and at last managed to move the very simple latch. Emily doused the lamp instantly, and they undid the lock, took it off its chain and opened the door.
They slipped inside with a gasp of relief and pushed the gate closed again, being careful to take the chain and padlock with them, in case its open state should be noticed and cause suspicion.
Charlotte looked around her. It was extremely dark. The wall was high enough to block off almost all the light from the streetlamps beyond, and the sky was too overcast to allow much of the pale, three-quarter moon to shed more than a faint luminescence.
“I can’t see,” Emily whispered. “We aren’t even going to find the greenhouse in this, never mind a bloodstain.”
“We can find the greenhouse,” Charlotte replied. “We’ll light the lamp again when we are inside it.”
“Do you really think anyone in the house would be awake at this hour?”
“No, but it isn’t worth the risk. We would be turned out before we could find anything, and how on earth would we explain ourselves?”
The argument silenced Emily. The thought of being found was too hideous even to contemplate. They had no imaginable excuse whatever.
Charlotte leading the way, they crept forward along a narrow cobbled path, slimy with moss and dew, Emily clinging onto Charlotte’s skirt to make sure they did not lose each other in the dark. To do that, and then come face to face, would be enough to break their nerve entirely. One shriek, however involuntary, would waken the neighborhood.
The huge mass of the house rose to their left, black against the pale clouds, and ahead of them was a broken roofline and the serrated edge of the spine of