Miss Charlotte thanked Mrs. Felton and said that they would not keep her from her work. The women parted ways not far from the vegetable patch, Mrs. Felton with a frown on her face. Half a minute later she caught up to Miss Charlotte and Mrs. Watson again.
“Ladies, ladies, I forgot to ask you, did Miss Baxter come out to see the fireworks?”
They all stopped. “No, she didn’t,” said Miss Charlotte slowly.
“Not even for fireworks? But she loves fireworks.”
“Does she?”
Mrs. Felton scratched the side of her red-tipped nose. “Come to think of it, she’s never told me anything of the sort. It’s just that on her bedroom mantel she has postcards with fireworks on them. So I always thought she liked them.”
Mrs. Felton was silent for a moment. “Maybe she was watching from inside. I do hope so.”
* * *
There were four vehicles in the carriage house, Mrs. Felton’s dogcart, the remise driven in by Lord Ingram, a Victoria, and a large and ancient-looking charabanc that could seat fifteen and probably came with the property when Miss Fairchild had acquired it.
Mr. Peters had used the charabanc to transport Mr. Young and his nephew the night before. In the early hours of the morning, when he’d disappeared with Mrs. Crosby, he’d taken a coach, which remained conspicuously absent.
“Do you think the coach might have come back and gone out again?” asked Mrs. Watson.
Miss Charlotte shook her head. “I see the muddy marks left by Mrs. Felton’s carriage coming in, but not a set of muddy marks coming in and going out again.”
The remise readied, Miss Charlotte took the reins, Mrs. Watson rode inside. They first went to the village to speak to Mr. Mears, then drove to the nearest railway station.
Mrs. Watson had her eyes peeled. She had no idea what the coach Mr. Peters drove away looked like but Miss Charlotte said that the other two Garden carriages bore crests with stylized alembics and this one would, too.
Few vehicles stood before the small rural station where they rolled to a stop. Mrs. Watson alit and circled the carriages one by one. She encountered only one rudimentary crest and it did not feature an alembic.
Miss Charlotte, waiting by the remise, was not surprised or discouraged by their lack of success. They traveled north to a second station, where their search was equally unfruitful. Mrs. Watson took the next turn driving. The remise bounced along narrow country lanes and splashed through puddles. She prayed that the wheels wouldn’t get stuck in a rut.
At least the rain was lifting. Sunlight spilled from seams in the clouds, bright slanted rays that haloed the sheep that grazed on the headlands. The air smelled of freshly washed grass. There was even a faint rainbow to the west, a beautiful mirage astride the firmament.
But would their case clear up like the sky after a thunderstorm? Or would it—she looked east at the increasingly foggy coastline—shroud itself in a great maritime brume?
At the third and fourth station along the only railway line in this part of the world, their quest remained futile.
“Is it possible that they didn’t board a train, but simply drove where they wanted to go?” asked Mrs. Watson, plodding back to the remise.
“They would only do that if they were leaving on a boat. We’ll have to look into that possibility if we don’t find their coach soon.”
Stations weren’t that far apart on the branch line. And they’d started south of where Mr. Peters and Mrs. Crosby were apparently headed—in case those two had turned around once they could no longer be seen by watchers on the Garden’s walls. So it was within the realm of possibility that the fugitives had driven a little farther.
What were Mr. Peters and Mrs. Crosby fleeing? Mrs. Watson recalled the various cases her late husband had attended. Had it been an appendectomy gone wrong? Did Miss Baxter suffer an aneurysm of the brain? Did her organs, deteriorating over years of slow poisoning, at last fail catastrophically?
Miss Charlotte had predicted that hypotheses would collapse soon. Mrs. Watson hadn’t been too sure then but now she agreed with Miss Charlotte—something significant had happened overnight. If only she knew what it was that caused Mrs. Crosby, who had been glued to the phantom Miss Baxter, to run out with only a satchel and no longer care whether Miss Baxter’s house was sufficiently guarded.
The fifth station was a larger station, with more carriages outside. Still, Mrs. Watson immediately spied the gleaming coach with a golden alembic crest—and the child next to it.
She exclaimed and thumped the top of the carriage with her umbrella. Miss Charlotte, already slowing the carriage, stopped. Mrs. Watson leaped off.
“Oh, look at this. It’s my friend’s coach,” she said brightly as she approached the child standing guard. “Did he pay you to look after it, young man?”
“You ain’t be getting it from me, lady,” said the urchin. “The guv’nor tole me not to give it to nobody ’cept ’im.”
“Goodness gracious, what would I do with his carriage when I’ve already got my own? But I’m surprised he isn’t back yet. I didn’t know he was going to take so long when he left this morning. When did he say he’d come back for the carriage?”
“Afore tea time.”
“Billy Simmons, who you talking to?” An older urchin with an obvious family resemblance to Billy Simmons came running.
“Nobody.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“Nothing.”
The older urchin looked at Mrs. Watson warily. “We’ve nothing else to tell you, lady. Best you be on your way.”
“I was just asking the young man here whether he would be interested in joining the Salvation Army’s Prodigal Sons Society,” said Mrs. Watson smoothly, “but perhaps another time.”
Inside the station, the ticket agent was not terribly helpful, though he was apologetic about it. The early morning had been busy and he had looked only at the amount of money handed in, not at the faces of the travelers.
They yielded their place when others queued up at the window. Mrs. Watson paced in frustration. At last they’d found the carriage, but where had Mr. Peters and Mrs. Crosby gone?
When the ticket-buyers had left, Miss Charlotte went up to the window again and asked the clerk if by any chance one of the urchins that hung about the station had bought any tickets this day. The man blinked but said no, he did not believe so.
On the drive back, Mrs. Watson joined Miss Charlotte on the driver’s perch. The scenery would have been beautiful but for the fog that already obscured the sea and crept steadily inland.
At one point, a gust dispersed some of the vapors, only to reveal three sinister-looking tombstones on a desolate headland, one of which tilted drunkenly.
By the time they arrived at the Garden of Hermopolis, Mrs. Watson’s mood had become as overcast as the day. But Miss Charlotte leaped down from the driver’s seat, stretched, and said cheerfully, “It’s time for lunch. I hope they have a good pudding.”
* * *
The previous afternoon, Livia had spent futile hours scouring newspaper archives, seeking information on Snowham. Today, her venue was the Reading Room at the British Museum, but her work was no more productive: She called for books, flipped through them, and found little of note.