I needn’t have worried. Pickwick bounded into the car after me, uninvited, scrabbling on the seat. I put my arm around him. We were in the backseat, and someone in a dark hat was up front driving. James circled the car and slid in next to me, his weight making the seat sag. He slammed the door, said, “Drive,” shortly to the man in front, and took my face in his hands as the vehicle began to move.
“Are you all right?” he said to me, brushing my cheeks with his thumbs. I looked into his face, the other vision finally clearing away. He looked more wonderful than anything I’d ever seen. I opened my mouth to tell him so, but he didn’t let me speak.
“Jesus, Ellie,” he said. “Where have you been? We found the bicycle—I nearly went mad. Are you hurt?”
“My head hurts,” I rasped, “but he didn’t hit me. Where were you?”
James glanced at the back of the driver’s head, fury in his eyes. “I was doing my best to protect you, despite our mutual friend here.”
“That was my chief inspector, you idiot,” came the reply from the front seat. “For the last time.”
“Inspector Merriken?” I said.
“The Yard took me in for questioning,” James told me through gritted teeth. “For Gloria’s murder. And the order to send men out here was delayed.”
For the first time I felt a thin strain of hysteria. “You weren’t there? Neither of you? Not on the train, not on the roads, not anywhere?” It had been the thought of the police watching from shouting distance that had given me courage. Instead, I’d been alone the entire time?
“No,” James said, running his hands gently down my shoulders, over my arms, looking for injuries. “Because the Yard is full of oafs who don’t know what they’re doing—”
“I was the one who got you out of there,” said Inspector Merriken.
“—and wouldn’t know a suspect if he popped right out of their asses and said hello.”
“There’s no respect for the police in this country,” Merriken complained, his voice deceptively mild.
“I came for you as soon as I could. It was him, wasn’t it?” said James to me. “He found you. Ellie, your knee is bleeding. We’ll have to— What did he do?”
I ran a hand through my hair, keeping the other arm around Pickwick, who was leaning into my side. He was trembling, unused to the motorcar, and I pulled him closer to me. “A rifle shot from a hilltop,” I said. “He knocked me right off my bicycle.”
The car was deadly silent as both men forgot their argument. James went positively gray.
“I’ll never forgive myself,” he said softly.
From the driver’s seat, Inspector Merriken’s voice was subdued. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Miss Winter, and I’m glad you’re all right. If you can tell me exactly how it happened, I can have some of my men search the area for his vantage point.”
“I already found it,” I said, not ready to talk about the figure in the woods who had led me there. “I already searched it.”
“Ah.” The inspector’s voice was gentle. “Good. With all due respect, Miss Winter, we still need to go over the scene for shell casings and the like. I don’t suppose you found any shell casings?”
“No. But your men will have to go back there anyway, because he left the body of the man who stopped him.” I swallowed. “And he left a cigarette.” I turned and looked at James, who was regarding me with an expression I couldn’t read. “I saw him,” I said. “I know who he is.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Dubbses’ house was at the end of a long, shaded drive, far from the road. The motorcar’s tires made a prickling sound on the gravel, and in places the branches of the trees dipped low enough to scrape the roof. By the time Inspector Merriken pulled the motorcar to a stop in front of the house, it felt as if we had descended into a hidden pocket of the country, a place where no one could see us.
The house itself was of red brick, with a thatched roof and a thick patch of ivy, already half russet, climbing the walls. A door of fresh-painted white showed like a tooth from its nest of ivy, and the mullioned windows winked in the sunlight as the sun began to lower in the afternoon sky. It was a house that had stood for a hundred years, the picture of bucolic English gentility, and it was easy to picture an old gentleman smoking his pipe while his wife puttered in the garden. The very last thing it looked like was a house that needed a séance.
“This is it?” I said, staring at it as James helped me out of the car. “This is where they live?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Inspector Merriken slammed the driver’s door and patted his pockets, anger and disgust written on his face.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It turns out the Dubbses are something of a cipher,” said James.
“That’s putting it mildly,” said the inspector.
I frowned, looking at the quiet house, the well-kept garden. “They’re gone to the Continent, you said.”
“Farther than that,” said James. “They’ve vanished.”
Inspector Merriken stopped patting his pockets and looked at me. “Do you recall our interview, Miss Winter?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You suggested I take another look at the Dubbses, specifically at their finances, as they paid both Gloria and Fitzroy Todd presumably high sums. Perhaps this will surprise you, but I took your advice. And what do you think I found?”
I shook my head, bewildered.
“Nothing,” the inspector said. “This house you see here is registered as owned by a Martin Dubbs, and that is all. Martin Dubbs has no birth record, no marriage record. His son has no birth record. He claimed to work for Barclays Bank in London, where he mostly lives, but when I checked, they had never heard of him. In short, Miss Winter, Martin Dubbs, and presumably his wife, are fakes.” Anger flushed red on his handsome cheekbones. “And I missed it.”